In the simple Allingham-Sandmo portfolio model of tax evasion an expected utility maximizer will cheat more than what is estimated in empirical studies. Two main types of explanation have been suggested as solutions to this puzzle: (1) Tax payers act according to some non-expected utility...

In a careful and thorough empirical study, Christopher Udry (1996) shows convincingly that, in a large sample of West African households, household resource allocations were not Pareto efficient. This paper argues that observation of the Pareto inefficiency of a household resource allocation...

Most large-scale economic experiments use a between-subjects random incentive system-BRIS-which selects a subset of the participants at random and offers real payment only to the selected participants. We evaluate the relative impact of nominal payoffs and the selection probability on the...

Concern about potential free riding in the provision of public goods has a long history. More recently, experimental economists have turned their attention to the conditions under which free riding would be expected to occur. A model of free riding is provided here which demonstrates that...

This paper explores the determinants of survival in a life-and-death situation created by an external and unpredictable shock. We are interested in seeing whether pro-social behaviour matters in such extreme situations. We therefore focus on the sinking of the RMS Titanic as a quasi-natural...

Using a theoretical model where students care about achievement rank, I study effort choices in the classroom and show that rank concerns generate peer effects. The model's key empirical prediction is that the effect on own achievement of increasing the dispersion in peer cost of effort is...

This paper analyzes persuasive advertising and pricing in oligopoly if firms sell differentiated products and consumers have heterogeneous social attitudes towards the consumption by others. Deriving product demand from primitives, we show that the demand-enhancing effect of persuasive...

Traditionally, it has been argued that profit sharing can increase employment and welfare because it lowers marginal labor costs without reducing total cost or labor income. In this paper, we show that profit sharing can also represent a Pareto-improvement if labor supply is excessive due to...

Relative consumption effects or status concerns that feature jealousy (in the sense of Dupor and Liu, AER 2003) boost consumption expenditure. If consumption is financed by labour income, such status considerations increase labour supply and, hence, the tax base. A higher taxable income, in...

In this paper we develop an overlapping generations model in which child care matters for human capital accumulation. We investigate whether an increase in labor supply brought about by a reduction in taxes is always associated with a reduction in parental time devoted to children, which...