(with Dilip Mookherjee), American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings) 92, 253–259, 2002.
Summary. We explore the view, further developed in our other work, that inequality is an inevitable consequence of the market mechanism.
Professor of Economics, New York University
Research Associate, NBER
Part-Time Professor, University of Warwick
Research Fellow, CESifo
Spool Member, ThReD
Department of Economics,
New York University,
19 West 4th Street
New York, NY 10012, U.S.A.
debraj.ray@nyu.edu, +1 (212)-998-8906.
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Oxford University Press, 2008. This book is now open-access; feel free to download a copy, and to buy the print version if you like the book.
⟳ Re-randomize
Group Decision-Making in the Shadow of Disagreement
(with Kfir Eliaz and Ronny Razin), Journal of Economic Theory 132, 236–273, 2007.
Summary. A model of group decision-making is studied, in which one of two alternatives must be chosen. Our model is distinguished by three features: private information regarding valuations, differing intensities in preferences, and the option to declare neutrality to avoid disagreement. There is always an equilibrium in which the majority is more aggressive in pushing its alternative, thus enforcing their will via both numbers and voice. However, under general conditions an aggressive minority equilibrium inevitably makes an appearance, provided that the group is large enough. Such equilibria invariably display a “tyranny of the minority”: the increased aggression of the minority always outweighs their smaller number, leading to the minority outcome being implemented with larger probability than the majority alternative.
Information and Enforcement in Informal Credit Markets
(with Parikshit Ghosh), Economica 83, 59–90, 2016.
Summary. We study loan enforcement in informal credit markets with multiple lenders but no sharing of credit histories, and derive the dynamics of loan size and interest rates for relational lending. In the presence of a sufficient fraction of ‘natural defaulters’, the rest of the market can be incentivized against default by micro-rationing—sharper credit limits and possibly higher interest rates that serve as gateways into new borrowing relationships. When there are too few natural defaulters in the market, this can be supplemented by macro-rationing—random exclusion of some borrowers. When information collection is endogenized, multiple equilibria may arise. (Published version of unpublished notes from 2001.)