(with Dilip Mookherjee), Review of Economic Studies 70, 369-393, 2003.
Summary. When human capital accumulation generates pecuniary externalities across professions, and capital markets are imperfect, persistent inequality in utility and consumption is inevitable in any steady state.
Economic Theory 29, 291–306, 2006.
Summary. The dynamics of inequality are studied in a model of human capital accumulation with credit constraints. This model admits a multiplicity of steady state skill ratios that exhibit varying degrees of inequality across households. The main result studies nonstationary equilibrium paths, and shows that an equilibrium sequence of skill ratios must converge monotonically to the smallest steady state that exceeds the initial ratio for that sequence. This paper, in honor of Mukul Majumdar, publishes notes from 1990, which contain a different proof of the main result.
(with Laura Mayoral), Journal of Development Economics 154, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102759 (2022).
Summary. This paper studies costly conflict over private and public goods. Oil is an example of the former, political and civil rights an example of the latter. Our theory predicts that groups in conflict are likely to be small when the prize is private, and large when the prize is public. We examine these implications empirically by constructing a global dataset at the ethnic group level and studying conflict along ethnic lines. Our theoretical predictions find significant confirmation in this setting, and the analysis sheds new light on group size and collective action in the context of violent conflict.