Julius Silver Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science, and
Professor of Economics, New York University
Research Associate, NBER
Part-Time Professor, University of Warwick
Council Member, Game Theory Society
Research Fellow, CESifo
Board Member, BREAD and ThReD
Researcher in Residence, ESOP

Department of Economics, NYU, 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.
≋ Three Randomly Selected Papers
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Gender Differentials in Eye Care: Access and Treatment

(with Rajshri Jayaraman and Shing-Yi Wang), Economic and Political Weekly 49 No. 25, June 21, 2014. 

Summary. Two potential sources of gender bias in health care are (a) females access treatment later than males and (b) they receive differential care at the medical facility. We explore both of these for eye care at a large Indian medical facility.  At presentation, women have worse diagnoses than men for indicators of symptomatic illness, such as myopia and cataract. There is no difference in treatment.

Contractual Structure and Wealth Accumulation

(with Dilip Mookherjee), American Economic Review 92, 818–849, 2002. Online Appendix.

Summary. Can historical wealth distributions affect long-run output and inequality despite “rational” saving, convex technology and no externalities? We consider a model of equilibrium short-period financial contracts, where poor agents face credit constraints owing to moral hazard and limited liability. If agents have no bargaining power, poor agents have no incentive to save: poverty traps emerge and agents are polarized into two classes, with no interclass mobility. If instead agents have all the bargaining power, strong saving incentives are generated: the wealth of poor and rich agents alike drift upward indefinitely and “history” does not matter eventually.

Evolving Aspirations and Cooperation

(with Rajeeva Karandikar,  Dilip Mookherjee, and Fernando Vega-Redondo), Journal of Economic Theory 80, 292-331, 1998.

Summary. A 2×2 game is played repeatedly by two satisficing players. The game considered includes the Prisoner’s Dilemma, as well as games of coordination and common interest. Each player has an aspiration at each date, and takes an action. The action is switched at the subsequent period only if the achieved payoff falls below aspirations; the switching probability depends on the shortfall. Aspirations are periodically updated according to payoff experience, but are occasionally subject to trembles. For sufficiently slow updating of aspirations and small tremble probability, it is shown that both players must ultimately cooperate most of the time.