This paper examines the role for tax policies in productivity-shock driven economies with \catching-up-with-the-Joneses" utility functions.The optimal tax policy is shown to a ect the economy countercyclically via procyclical taxes, i.e., \cooling down" the economy with higher taxes when it is...

We consider cooperative games with transferable utility (TU-games), in which we allow for a social structure on the set of players, for instance a hierarchical ordering or a dominance relation.The social structure is utilized to refine the core of the game, being the set of payoffs to the...

We present a nonparametric 'revealed preference' methodology for empiri- cally analyzing collective consumption behavior. First, we introduce an integer programming (IP) methodology for testing data consistency with collective con- sumption models that account for publicly as well as privately...

We develop a revealed preference approach to analyze non-unitary con- sumption models with intrahousehold allocations deviating from the cooper- ative (or Pareto e¢ cient) solution. At a theoretical level, we establish re- vealed preference conditions of household consumption models with...

We compare the empirical performance of unitary and collective labor supply models, using representative data from the Dutch DNB Household Survey.We conduct a nonparametric analysis that avoids the distortive impact of an erroneously speci.ed functional form for the prefer-ences and/or the...

We present a household consumption model that accounts for caring house- hold members, while allowing for noncooperative behavior in decisions on pub- lic goods. The intrahousehold consumption outcome critically depends on the degree of caring between the household members. By varying the degree...

We present an IP-based nonparametric (revealed preference) testing proce- dure for rational consumption behavior in terms of general collective models, which include consumption externalities and public consumption. An empiri- cal application to data drawn from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring...

We study the public policy implications of a model in which agents do not fully internalize all the conscequences of their actions. Such a model uni es seemingly disconected models with behavioral agents. We evaluate the scope of paternalistic and libertarian-parternalistic policies in the light...