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...

After personally engaging in the communication networks present at Vassar College, I have chosen to research the function of gossip in small communities such as college campuses. After collecting data on the many facets of gossip and informal information sharing...

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...

In this thesis, I explore the unique potential of political leaks to illuminate and critique the underlying power structure of the state. The primary motive of the institutional state is to maximize and preserve its own power; because of this...

This thesis examines how evolutionary psychologists study human mating preferences and strategies: the theories they test, the methods they use, and how they analyze their findings. Women's long-term mate preferences for high status, tall, investing men with resources and men's...

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...

In 2015, the Ugly Food Movement started by companies and campaigns to market and sell aesthetically suboptimal fruits and vegetables. The movement began in response to an increasingly visual culture in which many customers and retailers reject produce on the...

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...