2025 Zayira Ray
Julius Silver Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science,
Professor of Economics, New York University
Research Associate, NBER
Spool Member, ThReD
Research Fellow, CESifo


Department of Economics, 
New York University,
19 West 4th Street
New York, NY 10012, U.S.A.
debraj.ray@nyu.edu, +1 (212)-998-8906.

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Oxford University Press, 2008. This book is now open-access; feel free to download a copy, and to buy the print version if you like the book.
≋ Three Randomly Selected Papers
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Egalitarianism and Incentives

(with Kaoru Ueda), Journal of Economic Theory 71, 324-348, 1996.

Summary. A group of agents is collectively engaged in a joint productive activity. Each agent supplies an observable input, and output is then collectively shared among the members according a social welfare function. However, individual actions are taken on a selfish basis, and the collective decision is only made after inputs are chosen. This leads to inefficiency. The aim of this paper is to show formally that, contrary to popular belief, the degree of inefficiency decreases in the extent of egalitarianism embodied in the social welfare function.

Persistent Inequality

(with Dilip Mookherjee), Review of Economic Studies 70, 369-393, 2003.

Summary. When human capital accumulation generates pecuniary externalities across professions, and capital markets are imperfect, persistent inequality in utility and consumption is inevitable in any steady state. 

Nash Bargaining in Coalitional Games

(with Rajiv Vohra). April 2025, revised August 2026. Supplementary Notes.

Summary. We revisit Nash’s axiomatic bargaining solution when coalitions employ threats that must be consistent with their solutions. As in Nash, our solution maximizes a (possibly weighted) product of payoffs for each coalition, but subcoalitional threats appear as conventional constraints that are not netted out when maximizing the Nash product. We study different aspects of this coalitional solution, including its connections to a notion of “pragmatic egalitarianism”. We then embed the solution into a setting with externalities, and define viable coalitional structures, under which every coalition follows its coalitional solution but interacts noncooperatively with other coalitions. We discuss applications to public goods, R&D coalitions, oligopoly cartels, and hospital networks.