CRADLE White Paper Series

The CRADLE White Paper Series promotes original thinking in law and economics, drawing on insights from the social sciences. It is meant to be a space for publishing early ideas and work-in-progress.

About the Series 

We welcome submissions that are clear, well-structured, and intellectually engaging, offering a well-defined perspective on issues relevant to the evolving economic landscape shaped by rapid technological advancements, climate change challenges, and emerging forms of globalization. The series aims to help navigate this new world by promoting original thinking in law and economics and drawing on insights from social sciences. To foster diversity and inclusion within our intellectual community, we are particularly interested in receiving submissions from developing nations, including Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Submission Guidelines 

Submissions should be independent works, even if they draw from or summarize a larger body of research. If your submission is based on a previously published article or study, please include a link to the original publication. Where applicable, please use hyperlinks to reference online sources, particularly when making claims that require substantiation. 

We encourage you to keep your submissions under 8,000 words. Please use the Chicago Author-Date citation style for all references.

Submitted papers undergo a brief review process and are published upon acceptance. Please submit your paper using the submission form. The review process typically takes 10-15 working days. Please note that due to the high volume of submissions, we may not be able to send individual rejection responses. If your submission is accepted, we will get in touch with you directly. Minor revisions may be made before publication, while any substantial edits will be sent to the author for approval.

Please feel free to direct any questions or comments to Upasana Singh (us58@cornell.edu). 

Recent Papers

Inflation, Corporate Profits, and the Legal-Institutional Limits of Monetary Governance: Rethinking the Post-Pandemic…

Nischal Dhungel

This paper reinterprets the 2021-2023 post-pandemic inflation, particularly in the United States and advanced economies, through a structural and legal-institutional lens. Challenging orthodox macroeconomic explanations centered on aggregate demand, empirical evidence indicates that partial supply-side constraints, corporate mark-up expansion, and rising financial overhead primarily drove inflation. Drawing on Keynesian, Kaleckian, and Minskyan frameworks, the analysis demonstrates how legal…

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The Movement of Powers in Government: Schelling-Style Equilibrium and the Constitutional Doctrine of Separation of…

Jaivir Singh and T.C.A. Anant

The paper sets out to understand the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers in the face of change. To capture the dynamics of the doctrine we turn to a Machiavelli inspired conflict-centered view of politics and proceed to analyze conflict as a Schelling-style mixed-motive game, proposing that constitutional law generates focal points that endogenously shift the lines of power. These arguments are made with empirical support from our previous work centered on the Indian Constitution,…

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Convexity and Short-termism in Banker Compensation

Jacob Fisher

Two distinct mechanisms allow bank executives to personally profit from taking excessive risks: short-termism and convexity. While short-termism stems from time-horizon differences between bank management and shareholders, convexity results from manager-shareholder alignment because bank stock is a highly leveraged optionlike bet on the bank’s assets. Current U.S. policy initiatives intended to reduce risk taking do address short-termism but do not address convexity. I show how increased…

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The Health and Welfare Costs of Sovereign Serial Restructurings: Two Decades of Chinese Lending Practices and Their…

Khanh Nguyen

Since 2000, China has emerged as the largest bilateral creditor to developing countries, offering extensive financing through the Belt and Road Initiative. Amid rising defaults and repayment challenges, Chinese state-owned banks have relied heavily on serial restructurings: maturity extensions without face value reductions. While such strategies preserve loan nominal values in the short term, they risk perpetuating debt cycles without addressing underlying solvency issues.

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New Technology and Increasing Returns: The End of the Antitrust Century?

Kaushik Basu

The advance of digital technology is changing the nature of markets, enhancing the capacity of corporations to extract more consumers’ surplus and lower the wages paid to workers. The rise of new technology has also diminished the efficacy of traditional laws to regulate firms and corporations. This is best illustrated by antitrust laws. With the new technology, there are greater returns to scale in production, and further, it is possible to have different components of the same final good be…

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