We consider a general equilibrium model where groups operating in a competitive market environment can have several members and make efficient collective consumption decisions. Individuals have the option to leave the group and make it on their own or join another group. We study the effect of...

We examine how a shift of bargaining power within households operating in a competitive market environment affects equilibrium allocation and welfare. If price effects are sufficiently small, then typically an individual benefits from an increase of bargaining power, necessarily to the detriment...

We consider firms and multi-member households operating in a competitive market environment. Households are endowed with resources (commodity bundles) and shares of firm ownership. Household members are characterized by individual preferences, possibly with intra-household consumption...

We provide a test of the role of social preferences and beliefs in voluntary cooperation and its decline. We elicit individuals’ cooperation preferences in one experiment and use them – as well as subjects’ elicited beliefs – to explain contributions to a public good played repeatedly....

Policies and explicit private incentives designed for self-regarding individuals sometimes are less effective or even counterproductive when they diminish altruism, ethical norms and other social preferences. Evidence from 51 experimental studies indicates that this crowding out effect is...

This paper is a survey of the literature on theoretical models of the household, paying particular attention to some of the earlier contributions, and using them to place the current state of the theory in perspective. One of its aims is to suggest that the literature’s neglect of...