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.

Or use navbar and search icon at the top of this page to look for specific research areas and papers.
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
Re-randomize

Economic Growth With Intergenerational Altruism

(with Doug Bernheim), Review of Economic Studies 54, 227-243, 1987.

Summary. We consider the properties of equilibrium behavior in an aggregative growth model with intergenerational altruism. Various positive properties such as the cyclicity of equilibrium programs, and the convergence of equilibrium stocks to a steady state, are analyzed. Among other normative properties, it is established that under certain natural conditions, Nash equilibrium programs are efficient and “modified Pareto optimal”, in a sense made clear in the paper, but never Pareto optimal in the traditional sense.

What’s New in Development Economics?

The American Economist 44, 3-16, 2000.

Summary. This essay is meant to describe the current frontiers of development economics, as I see them. I might as well throw my hands up at the beginning and say there are too many frontiers. In recent years, the subject has made excellent use of economic theory, econometric methods, sociology, anthropology, political science and demography and has burgeoned into one of the liveliest areas of research in all the social sciences.

Group Formation in Risk-Sharing Arrangements

 (with Garance Genicot), Review of Economic Studies 70, 87-113, 2003.

Summary. We study informal insurance within communities, explicitly recognizing the possibility that subgroups of individuals may destabilize insurance arrangements among the larger group. We therefore consider self-enforcing risk-sharing agreements that are robust not only to single-person deviations but also to potential deviations by subgroups. Variant on an Example in the paper. A conjecture related to the paper.