Sudipta Sarangi

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Virginia Tech

A pesar de los avances significativos en el acceso de las mujeres a la educación universitaria en las últimas décadas, existe aún una profunda brecha de género en disciplinas STEM, particularmente en carreras de ingeniería (UNESCO, 2017). En el caso peruano, sólo 30% de los postulantes a ingeniería son mujeres. En este contexto, la investigación ti...

We model three factors that affect effectiveness of trade sanctions: a country's endowment, distance between countries, and network connectivity. Our model explains several empirical observations: (i) sanctions impose costs on both sender and target; (ii) sanctions are often unsuccessful; and (iii) import sanctions, and export plus import sanctions...

We propose and characterize a new value for TU cooperative games based on egalitarian distribution of worths in smaller coalitions and players' marginal productivity in larger coalitions. This value belongs to the class of Procedural values due to Malawski. Our value is identical with the Shapley value on one extreme and the Equal Division rule on...

We consider an incomplete information network game in which agents' information is restricted only to the identity of their immediate neighbors. Agents form beliefs about the adjacency pattern of others and play a linear-quadratic effort game to maximize interim payoffs. We establish the existence and uniqueness of Bayesian-Nash equilibria in pure...

A growing strand of literature documents how historical agricultural and ecological factors continue to determine women’s role and well-being in society through cultural transmission even today. Studies have shown that such factors are significantly associated with perceptions regarding women’s right to jobs and their abilities as political leaders...

We examine the interplay between the business and logistical aspects of a heterogeneous vehicle mix and fleet size problem using inputs from a dairy cooperative in India. Five objective functions have been modelled and simultaneously solved using a mixed-integer linear fuzzy goal programming method. These include net profit as a maximization functi...

We study message credibility in social networks with biased and unbiased agents. Biased agents prefer a specific outcome while unbiased agents prefer the true state of the world. Each agent who receives a message knows the identity (but not type) of the message creator and only the identity and types of their immediate neighbors. We characterize th...

This paper investigates whether social movements that empower minority groups improve educational outcomes. We provide a theoretical model where some firms are discriminatory and set up a hostile working environment allowing employers to give a lower wage to minority employees. Social movements, like the BLM, may help increase the salience of discr...

We consider a Prisoner's Dilemma model with a pre-play communication stage. Players get a disutility from deceiving others after sending a message of conditional cooperation. Each player's realized lying aversion cost is private information. We prove existence and characterize the (unique) symmetric perfect Bayesian equilibrium that maximizes coope...

In cooperative games with transferable utilities, the Shapley value is an extreme case of marginalism while the Equal Division rule is an extreme case of egalitarianism. The Shapley value does not assign anything to the non-productive players and the Equal Division rule does not concern itself to the relative efficiency of the players in generating...

Gender disparities in STEM fields participation are a major cause of concern for policymakers around the world. In addition to talent misallocation, low female enrollment rates in STEM careers contribute to gender-based inequalities in earnings and wealth, given the higher average level of earnings in these fields. This paper studies the effects of...

In designing solution concepts for cooperative games with transferable utilities, consolidation of marginalism and egalitarianism has been widely studied. The \(\alpha \)-Egalitarian Shapley value is one such solution that combines the Shapley value and the Equal Division rule, the two most popular extreme instances of marginalism and egalitarianis...

This paper surveys the literature on social preferences and their incorporation in a public goods game. The Nash equilibrium in a typical public goods game is to free ride; however, experimental evidence shows that players frequently cooperate. When an individual’s utility function accounts for social preferences, it can explain cooperative behavio...

Outbreaks of infectious diseases bring behavior and policy responses into sharp focus since societies face acute constraints and uncertainties. This paper compares two infectious disease outbreaks: the Covid-19 pandemic and the 1665 London plague outbreak described by Daniel Defoe in A Journal of the Year of the Plague published in 1722. We compare...

Homo economicus, the typical economic man, is a rational agent whose goal is to find the optimal solution to any problem. However, this may not be feasible in complex situations like the current global pandemic. We argue that in such environments where Knightian uncertainty plays a big role, the behaviour of countries, sectors of the economy, and i...

Do all aspects of social capital improve repayment behavior in group lending programs? The group lending literature typically uses one or few measures of social capital in a linear form, and systematically understates the uncertainty of results and model specifications. As a result, many papers conclude that specific measures of social capital do n...

This paper examines the formation of one network G when connections in a second network H are inherited under two scenarios: (i) H is asymmetric allowing for a wide range of networks called nested split graphs, and (ii) H is a connected regular graph. The bulk of our paper assumes that both G and H are interdependent because the respective actions...

This paper examines the relationship between ecological endowments in antiquity and contemporary female to male sex ratios in the population. It is found that there are proportionately more missing women in countries whose ancestral ecological endowments were poorer. This relationship is shown to be strong even after ancestral plough use, the timin...

In this research, we broaden the scope of system dynamics formulations by building on a previously proposed approach to bridge fuzzy logic with dynamic modeling. Our methodology illustrates how to formulate fuzzy dynamic variables in a meaningful way. We highlight several modeling challenges, including the selection of a fuzzification and defuzzifi...

We consider an oligopoly setting in which firms form pairwise collaborative links in research and development with other firms. Each collaboration generates a value that depends on the identity of the firms that collaborate. First, we provide properties satisfied by pairwise equilibrium networks and efficient networks. Second, we use these properti...

This paper investigates decision quality in large choice sets across several choice architectures in three studies. In the first controlled experiment, we manipulate two features of a choice architecture—the response mode (for ranking alternatives) and presentation mode (for presenting alternatives). Our design objectively ranks all 16 choice optio...

This paper examines in what roles women have an impact on corruption by focusing on female labor force participation and their presence in the parliament. Since much of the corruption literature is plagued either by the lack of instruments or weak instruments, this paper makes a methodological contribution by drawing inferences based on Moreira's (...

This paper investigates how lineages, the commonly found organizations in rural villages of China, affect people's intra- and cross-lineage cooperative behavior. We use data from the Chinese Household Income Project Survey 2002, which exclusively contains information about the lineage structure in these villages allowing us to classify three levels...

In this paper we study the relationship between multi-way means of communication and corruption by exploring the link between social media and corruption. Using a cross-country analysis of over 150 countries, we document a robust and statistically significant negative relationship between Facebook penetration (a proxy for social media) and corrupti...

We study network formation in a situation where the network allows players to obtain information (signals) about other players. This information is important for making a payoff relevant decision. However, not all information is reliable and so players may have an incentive to check it. By obtaining multiple messages about the same player through t...

We generalize the analysis of Brueckner’s [(2006). Friendship networks. Journal of Regional Science, 847–865] friendship networks under different types of asymmetries. We first study cost asymmetries by allowing for cost-magnetic agents. These are players whose linking costs are the lowest. Next we focus on network-based asymmetries by allowing for...

We examine a non-cooperative model of network formation where players may stop functioning. We identify conditions under which Nash and efficient networks will remain connected after the loss of nodes by introducing the notion of -Node Super Connectivity.

This paper reports the results of laboratory experiments that are designed to test theoretical predictions in a multi-battle contest with value complementarities among the battles. The specific setting is a game of Hex where control of each region is determined by a Tullock contest and the overall winner is determined by the combination of claimed...

This paper uses a donor–provider–agent framework to study the role of provider incentives for the delivery of developmental goods like aid, credit, or technology transfer to the poor. It considers a situation where credible communication by the provider is the key to successful delivery. The study focuses on the interplay between incentives and com...

We consider a multimarket framework where a set of firms compete on two oligopolistic markets. The cost of production of each firm allows for spillovers across markets, ensuring that output decisions for both markets have to be made jointly. Prior to competing in these markets, firms can establish business intelligence gathering links with other fi...

In this paper we examine efficient networks in network formation games with global spillovers that satisfy convexity and sub-modularity properties. Unlike the previous literature we impose these properties on individual payoff functions. We establish that efficient networks of this class of games are nested split graphs. This allows us to complete...

We consider a multi-market framework where a set of firms compete on two oligopolistic markets. The cost of production of each firm allows for spillovers across markets, ensuring that output decisions for both markets have to be made jointly. Prior to competing in these markets, firms can establish links gathering business intelligence about other...

We propose that historical resource scarcity played a role in the evolution of gender norms inimical to women, cultures that persists to this day. This is a plausible thesis for three reasons. First, male dominance in some species of non-human primate may have been shaped by their resource environments. Second, the prehistoric human skeletal record...

We use a recent survey of college (American) football fans to study rivalry, where we find the most intense rivalries occur between in-state teams. Relatedly, within a conference fans are more likely to target rivalrous feelings toward the winningest teams and, in Bowl Championship Series conferences, teams who have been conference members for a lo...

A value of a TU Cooperative game represents an assessment by a player of her gains for participating in a coalition. One of the most important values in the literature of TU games is the Shapley value [18]. It is indeed an aggregation of the marginal contributions of a player based on her bilateral interactions. In this paper we introduce a new val...

This paper examines the relationship between the bundling decision of a large firm and the impact of spillovers from smaller firms drawing on stylized facts from the software industry. We find that bundling occurs only in the presence of significant spillovers from the two smaller firms. The large firm does not bundle when there are spillovers for...

We propose an allocation rule that takes into account the importance of both players and their links and characterize it for a fixed network. Our characterization is along the lines of the characterization of the Position value for Network games by van den Nouweland and Slikker [28]. The allocation rule so defined admits multilateral interactions a...

The recently elected 16th Lok Sabha of India will have a record number of 61 women parliamentarians. This column assesses whether women in the labour force or positions of power can have an impact on corruption. Analysing data from over 125 countries, it finds that women can reduce corruption but only in policymaking positions. They can do so via p...

This paper examines the precise role – the bribe-taking role, the decision-making role or policy making role in which women’s presence can have an impact on corruption. It is the first paper in the gender and corruption literature to establish causality by using an IV approach. We provide robust evidence that women’s presence in parliament has a ca...

We study how group membership affects behavior both when group members can and cannot interact with each other. Our goal is to isolate the contrasting forces that spring from group membership: a free-riding incentive leading to reduced effort and a sense of social responsibility that increases effort. In an environment with varying task difficulty...

In this survey, we present recent developments in the literature on Network games. We briefly cover the literature on Communication situations and the corresponding allocation rules. This is followed by a review on the existing player- and link-based fixed and flexible allocation rules for networks. It is worth mentioning that all the allocation ru...

In this paper we study the relationship between multi-way means of communication and corruption. Unlike traditional platforms like TV or print media, which only provide a one-way channel of communication, the internet and social media platforms provide for two-way flow of information. Using Facebook as a proxy for social media, we show that Faceboo...

The proliferating number of rape incidents in India is chilling. This column discusses the various perspectives on the causes of rape, and the economic, social and legal factors that play a role in the high incidence of this crime in the country. It suggests taking steps to increase the cost of rapes for the perpetrators.

This paper evaluates the impact of an area-based congestion pricing scheme in terms of its effectiveness on mitigating traffic congestion by using a system dynamics model. Unknown parameter values are calibrated using data available from the area-based pricing scheme implemented in the London metropolitan area. The key features of our model are tha...

Several current issues in economics are centered on scheduling and matching problems, notably including the 2012 Nobel Prize winning work. Such problems usually lie outside the scope of most undergraduate courses. We present a relatively simple problem that can be used to introduce the graph theory needing to teach these interesting but somewhat di...

We examine a modified 2 \(\times \) 2 game of Hex in which the winner of each cell is determined by a Tullock contest. The player establishing a winning path of cells in the game wins a fixed prize. Examining the polar cases of all cells being contested simultaneously versus all four cells being contested sequentially, we show that there is an incr...

Using 2008-2009 data, we identify winning input combinations for the game of cricket in two different formats: 50-over one-day internationals and 20-over games from Twenty20 internationals and the Indian Premier League. We find that attacking batting and bowling are the best determinants of the winning probability in both formats in an internationa...

In this note, we extend the Goyal and Joshi’s model of collaboration networks in oligopoly to multi-market situations. We examine the incentive of firms to form links and the architectures of the resulting equilibrium networks in this setting. We then present some results on efficient networks.

This paper analyzes the asymmetries with regard to the resources obtained by groups of players in equilibrium networks. We use the notion of condensation networks which allows us to partition the population into sets of players who obtain the same resources and we order these sets according to the resources obtained. We establish that the nature of...

We consider a standard linear city model with two firms, where firms and consumers both incur transport costs. This is done by assuming that the total transport cost is shared by the buyers and sellers according to an exogenously given rule. In the model, firms choose locations and prices, with the transportation cost being linear in distance. We f...

In the management of organizations both public and private, many decisions are made by committees. The most common decision-making procedure in committees is by voting. In this paper we consider a generalization of voting games called bicooperative games where the strength of coalitions is taken into account. We show the existence and uniqueness of...

Theoretical models of group lending assume that all group members are identical in terms of their effect on repayment performance. In practice however, this may not be true. We have a unique dataset obtained from a survey of 160 borrowing groups in Jordan to investigate the impact of joint liability, screening and monitoring activities, and social...

We propose an allocation rule that takes into account the importance of both players and their links and characterizes it for a fixed network. Unlike previous rules, our char-acterization does not require that the allocation rule be component balance. Next, we extend it to flexible network a la Jackson (2005). Finally, we provide a comparison with...

We study the formation of mutual insurance networks in a model where every agent who obtains more resources gives a fixed amount of resources to all agents who have obtained less resources. The low resource agent must be directly linked to the high resource agent to receive this transfer. We identify the pairwise stable networks and efficient netwo...

This paper examines directed networks in which the payoff of a player depends on the total number links formed by her and the other players. After showing that these networks with global spillovers may not always have Nash equilibria in pure strategies, we introduce two additional properties for the payoff function. The first called increasing (or...

Previous studies have demonstrated that a multitude of options can lead to choice overload, reducing decision quality. Through controlled experiments, we examine sequential choice architectures that enable the choice set to remain large while potentially reducing the effect of choice overload. A specific tournament-style architecture achieves this...

We investigate the Nash equilibria of game theoretic models of network formation based on explicit consent in link formation. These so-called “consent models” explicitly take account of link formation costs. We provide characterizations of Nash equilibria of such consent models under both one-sided and two-sided costs of link formation. We relate t...

Individuals bring effort to a group to achieve a common objective. Group membership introduces a free-riding incentive, reducing effort, and also a sense of social responsibility, increasing effort. In an environment with varying task difficulty, we show that the free-riding effect is stronger. Group members significantly reduce their effort in sit...

We examine the process of building social relationships in a non-cooperative game where such link formation is costly and requires mutual consent. We provide a noncooperative foundation for several link-based network stability concepts that have been studied in the literature on network formation. In our model players form myopic beliefs about the...

In this paper we consider four different game-theoretic approaches to describe the formation of social networks under mutual consent and costly communication. First, we consider Jackson-Wolinsky’s concept of pairwise stability. Next, we introduce a stronger version of this concept based on linking decisions by nodes, denoted as strict pairwise stab...

Using controlled experiments, we examine how individuals make choices when faced with multiple options. Choice tasks are designed to mimic the selection of health insurance, prescription drug, or retirement savings plans. In our experiment, available options can be objectively ranked allowing us to examine optimal decision making. First, the probab...