Using a South African data set, the paper poses six questions about the determinants of subjective well-being. Much of the paper is concerned with the role of relative concepts. We find that comparator income – measured as average income of others in the local residential cluster - enters the...

This paper presents the results of an experiment where an unequal wealth distribution was created and then subjects could act to change this wealth distribution. Subjects received money by betting and possibly by arbitrary (undeserved) gifts; they could then pay to reduce, redistribute and, in...

This paper models the indirect evolution of the preferences of a population of fully rational agents repeatedly matched to play a symmetric 2 x 2 game in biological fitnesses. Each agent is biased in favor of one of the strategies, and receives a noisy signal of his and his opponent`s bias. With...

Evolutionary game theory has largely focused on finite games. Dynamic stability is harder to attain in infinite strategy spaces; Bomze (Monatshefte fur Mathematik 110, 1990, 189-206) and Oechssler and Riedel (Economic Theory 17, 2001, 141-162) provide conditions for the stability of rest points...

This paper presents the results of an experiment where people can reduce (`burn`) other subjects` money at a cost to their own, with the decisions of one of them (randomly chosen after all decisions are made) getting implemented to determine final winnings. Almost 50% of the subjects engage in...

This paper examines the motivation for intergenerational transfers between adult children and their parents, and the nature of preferences for such giving behaviour, in an experimental setting.  Participants in our experiment play a series of dictator games with parents and strangers, in which...

Several models of intra-household decision making have been suggested in the literature. One important dichotomy is between non-cooperative and cooperative models (including specific models of bargaining). The other important distinction is between models that allow for caring and those that do...

Using detailed survey data from Nepal, this paper examines the determinants of child labor with a special emphasis on urban proximity. We find that children residing in or near urban centers attend school more and work less in total but are more likely to be involved in wage work or in a small...

Donors who try to impose policy conditionality on countries receiving their aid commonly face confflicting incentives between using aid to induce income-increasing reforms and using aid to assist low-income countries: this confflict can lead to a time-consistency problem. This paper o¤ers a...