We develop a theoretical framework to study the psychology of poverty and 'aspirations failure', defined as the failure to aspire to one's own potential. In our framework, rich and the poor persons share the same preferences and same behavioural bias in setting aspirations. We show that poverty can exacerbate the effects of this behavioural bias leading to aspirations failure and hence, a behavioural poverty trap. Aspirations failure is a consequence of poverty, rather than a cause. We specify the conditions under which raising aspirations alone is sufficient to help escape from a poverty trap, even without relaxing material constraints.The Chronic Poverty Report estimates that 320-443 million people live trapped in chronic poverty: that is, these people remain poor for much or all of their lives and their children are likely to inherit their poverty as well. An influential literature on poverty traps argues that such persistent poverty is driven by constraints that are external to the individual. Examples of such constraints are credit or insurance market imperfections (

This paper studies a model of dynamic network formation when individuals are farsighted : players evaluate the desirability of a "current" move in terms of its consequences on the entire discounted stream of payoffs. We define a concept of equilibrium which takes into account far-sighted behavior of agents and allows for limited cooperation amongst agents. We show that an equilibrium process of network formation exists. We also show that there are network structures in which no equilibrium strategy profile can sustain efficient networks. We then provide sufficient conditions under which the equilibrium process will yield efficient outcomes.

We develop a theoretical framework to study the psychology of poverty and 'aspirations failure', defined as the failure to aspire to one's own potential. In our framework, rich and the poor persons share the same preferences and same behavioural bias in setting aspirations. We show that poverty can exacerbate the effects of this behavioural bias leading to aspirations failure and hence, a behavioural poverty trap. Aspirations failure is a consequence of poverty, rather than a cause. We specify the conditions under which raising aspirations alone is sufficient to help escape from a poverty trap, even without relaxing material constraints.The Chronic Poverty Report estimates that 320-443 million people live trapped in chronic poverty: that is, these people remain poor for much or all of their lives and their children are likely to inherit their poverty as well. An influential literature on poverty traps argues that such persistent poverty is driven by constraints that are external to the individual. Examples of such constraints are credit or insurance market imperfections (

In this paper, we investigate the problem of the strategic foundation of the Cournot-Walras equilibrium approach. To this end, we respecifyà la Cournot-Walras the mixed version of a model of simultaneous, noncooperative exchange, originally proposed by Lloyd S. Shapley. We show, through an example, that the set of the Cournot-Walras equilibrium allocations of this respecification does not coincide with the set of the Cournot-Nash equilibrium allocations of the mixed version of the original Shapley's model. As the nonequivalence, in a one-stage setting, can be explained by the intrinsic two-stage nature of the Cournot-Walras equilibrium concept, we are led to consider a further reformulation of the Shapley's model as a two-stage game, where the atoms move in the first stage and the atomless sector moves in the second stage. Our main result shows that the set of the Cournot-Walras equilibrium allocations coincides with a specific set of subgame perfect equilibrium allocations of this two-stage game, which we call the set of the Pseudo-Markov perfect equilibrium allocations. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, D51. * We would like to thank Pierpaolo Battigalli, Marcellino Gaudenzi, and an anonymous referee for their comments and suggestions.

We study a model of sovereign debt crisis that combines problems of creditor co-ordination and debtor moral hazard. In the face of sovereign default, the need to give appropriate incentives to the debtor leads to excessive 'rollover failure' by creditors. We discuss how the incidence of crises might be reduced by international sovereign bankruptcy proceduresinvolving increased 'contractibility' of sovereign debtor's payoffs, suspension of convertibility in a 'discovery' phase and penalties in case of malfeasance. In relation to the current debate, this is more akin to the IMF's Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism than the Collective Action Clauses promoted by others.

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We study a model of costly voting over two alternatives, where agents' preferences are determined by both (i) a private preference in favour of one alternative e.g. candidates' policies, and (ii) heterogeneous information in the form of noisy signals about a commonly valued state of the world e.g. candidate competence. We show that depending on the level of the personal bias (weight on private preference), voting is either according to private preferences or according to signals. When voting takes place according to private preferences, there is a unique equilibrium with ine¢ciently high turnout. In contrast, when voting takes place according to signals, turnout is locally too low. Multiple Pareto-ranked voting equilibria may exist and in particular, compulsory voting may Pareto dominate voluntary voting. Moreover, an increase in personal bias can cause turnout to rise or fall, and an increase in the accuracy of information may cause a switch to voting on the basis of signals and thus lower turnout, even though it increases welfare.