Trade and export, it is argued, spur economic growth. This paper studies the microeconomics of exporting. We build a heuristic model of transactions between exporters and producers and relate it to East India Company (EIC) operations in colonial Bengal. Our model and the historical record stress two difficulties: the exporter and its agents might not uphold payment agreements, and producers might not honor sales contracts. The model shows when procurement succeeds or fails, highlighting the tension between these two hold-up problems. We analyze several cases, including the EIC's cotton textile venture, the famous Opium Monopoly, and present-day contract farming.

This review culls noneconomic literature on education--by sociologists, anthropologists, and practitioners to present a new economic theory of students and schools. This theory elaborates two themes that have eluded economic analysis. First is the student as decision-maker whose primary motivation is her identity. Second is a conception of the school as a social institution. This framework suggests a new perspective on questions such as resource allocation and school reform. It explains why some educational policies succeed and others fail. We show how sociological variables may affect outcomes, and suggest ways economists can incorporate them into theoretical and empirical research.

This paper considers how identity, a person's sense of self, affects economic outcomes. We incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior. In the utility function we propose, identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave. We then construct a simple game-theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions. The paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace, the economics of poverty and social exclusion, and the household division of labor. In each case, the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis.