The paper proposes and applies statistical tests for poverty dominance that check for whether poverty comparisons can be made robustly over ranges of poverty lines and classes of poverty indices. This helps provide both normative and statistical confidence in establishing poverty rankings across...

We present a tractable stochastic endogenous growth model that explains how social capital influences economic development. In our model, social capital increases citizens' awareness of government activity. Hence, it alleviates the electoral incentives to under- invest in education, whose...

We develop a model in which delinquents compete with each other in criminal activities but may benefit from being friends with other criminals by learning and acquiring proper know-how on the crime business. By taking the social network connecting agents as given, we study the subgame perfect...

Moral values influence individual behavior and social interactions. A specially significant instance is the case of moral values concerning work effort. Individuals determine what they take to be proper behaviour and judge the others, and themselves, accordingly. They increase their esteem -and...

To help explain differences between the US and EU "social contracts" as well as other cultural differences, we present a model of rational voting over redistribution where individual attitudes toward others are endogenously determined. Individuals differ in their productivities and their degree...

We examine the interactions between individual behavior, sentiments and the social contract in a model of rational voting over redistribution. Agents have moral work values. Individuals self-esteem and social consideration of others are endogenously determined comparing behaviors to moral...

Has there been an increase in positive assortative mating? Does assortative mating contribute to household income inequality? Data from the United States Census Bureau suggests there has been a rise in assortative mating. Additionally, assortative mating affects household income inequality. In...

We set up a signaling game where individuals differ in ability and wealth. Higher ability means larger benefit supported by the government. Costly signals are used to transmit information regarding own deservingness. However, capital market imperfections may perturb the signals by limiting the...

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, we develop the measurement theory of polarization for the case in which income distributions can be described using density functions. Second, we provide sample estimators of population polarization indices that can be used to compare polarization...

We examine how much of an extra dollar of parental lifetime resources will ultimately be passed on to adult children in the form of inter vivos transfers and bequests. We infer bequests from the stock of wealth late in life. We use mortality rates and age specific estimates of the response of...