Vassar College Digital Library

Vassar Scholarship

Vassar Scholarship, the institutional repository formerly known as Digital Window, reflects the research and scholarly output of the Vassar College community.  It provides access to a variety of collections, including senior theses and projects across a wide range of disciplines.

An Islamic perspective on inequality in Pakistan

Publication Date
1991-October-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

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...

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Built for speed: strain in the cartilaginous vertebral columns of sharks

Publication Date
2014-February-01
Document Type
Document Type
Abstract

In most bony fishes vertebral column strain during locomotion is almost exclusively in the intervertebral joints, and when these joints move there is the potential to store and release strain energy. Since cartilaginous fishes have poorly mineralized vertebral centra, we...

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Do fringe benefits cause layoffs?

Publication Date
1990-October-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

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...

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Inequality in Pakistan, 1984-85 to 1987-88: A social welfare approach

Publication Date
1991-August-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

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...

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On the geometry of constant returns

Publication Date
2000-August-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

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...

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Optimal implicit contracts and the choice between layoffs and work sharing

Publication Date
1989-October-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

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...

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Queer Hermeneutics for an Unbound Temporality: Schools as Passageway

Publication Date
2015-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Access Level
Abstract

Queer theorists have posited that normativity is involved in a spatial practice. American society has taken great care to assign different levels of value to different identities as well as to the time and space they inhabit. Inequitable structures of...

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Zakat and inequality: Some evidence from Pakistan

Publication Date
1993-November-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

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...

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