Vassar Scholarship

This paper examines the distribution of income in Pakistan, and in each of its four provinces, from an explicit and formal Islamic perspective. A cardinally significant Atkinson-Kolm-Sen relative index of inequality reflecting that perspective is proposed and computed from the...

It is commonly believed that firms prefer layoffs to worksharing, in part, because layoffs economize on fringe benefit costs. We find that when labor markets are characterized by optimal implicit contracts, layoffs will never occur in equilibrium, regardless of the...

This paper presents new results on income distribution in Pakistan from an analysis of the full HIES data tapes for 1984-85, 1985-86, 1986-87, and 1987-88. An explicit social welfare methodology is adopted to measure changes in inequality at the national...

Constant returns to scale, always a simplifying assumption, is often also much more: many important results depend critically on the very special properties of this class of production function. This paper provides a unified set of simple proofs for most...

Implicit contract models of labor market equilibrium under work sharing and layoffs are constructed to examine several common explanations for the observed market bias in favor of layoffs. We first establish the optimality of work sharing in the absence of...

This paper analyzes the magnitude of earnings differentials and differences in the rates of return to education for individuals who attended private and public high schools in the U.S. from 1976 to 1983, controlling for self-selection into school sector, as...

More than 100 savings and loans are currently involved in supervisory goodwill litigation against the federal government, with total claims approach fifty billion dollars. These claims arise from a provision in the 1989 Financial Institutions Reform Recovery and Enforcement Act...

This paper develops a model of private school choice that incorporates measures of the availability and costs of private schooling, as well as the quality of existing public schools, in the local market for secondary education. Using data from the...

This paper develops a model of private school choice that incorporates measures of the availability and costs of private schooling, as well as the quality of existing public schools, in the local market for secondary education. Using data from the...

ThemTube is a 3-part video essay, running about an hour in total. I aimed to characterize the contradictory, ambiguous status of YouTube, a site that claims to level the playing field for video creators while promoting certain users over the...

Using a unique set of publicly-traded litigation certificates, we measure the wealth effects of (largely) unanticipated damage awards in the ongoing supervisory goodwill litigation between thrifts and the federal government. Estimating abnormal returns for portfolios of litigation certificates and retained...

This paper presents empirical evidence on the extent to which zakat - a form of religiously-mandated charity under Islam - achieves its intended objective in Pakistan. Detailed income and expenditure data from Pakistan's Household Income and Expenditure Survey for 1987-88...