We demonstrate how altruism can surge in a population of nonaltruists. We assume that each individual plays a one-shot prisoner's dilemma game with his or her sibling, or with a stranger, and that the probability that an individual survives to reproduce is proportional to his or her payoff in...

The intersection of the standard altruism hypothesis with the quite strong evidence that bequests tend to be equal suggests that inter-vivos transfers should be strongly compensatory. Yet the available evidence is not in congruence with this implication. It has therefore been inferred that the...

The tractable general equilibrium model developed by Golosov et al. (2014), GHKT for short, is modified to allow for stock-dependent fossil fuel extraction costs and partial exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves, a negative impact of global warming on growth, mean reversion in climate damages,...

The macroeconomic effects on growth, investment and private sector employment of different ways of rolling back the welfare state are analysed. Cutting public spending on private goods induces a lower interest rate, a higher wage, a lower capital stock and a fall in employment. Cutting public...

Making use of restrictions imposed by equilibrium, theoretical progress has been made on the nonparametric and semiparametric estimation and identification of scalar additive hedonic models (Ekeland, Heckman, and Nesheim, 2002) and scalar nonadditive hedonic models (Heckman, Matzkin, and...

This paper considers the identification and estimation of hedonic models. We establish that in an additive version of the hedonic model, technology and preferences are generically identified up to affine transformations from data on demand and supply in a single hedonic market. For a very...

The nature of oil demand influences the oil extraction rate and hence has implications for both the timing of oil exhaustion and optimal climate policy. We analyse what role oil demand specification plays in strategic interactions b between an oil-importing country producing final goods and...

Democratic countries with substantial inequality and where people believe that success depends on connections and luck induce political support for high tax rates and generous welfare states. Traditional wisdom is that such policies harm the economy, but there is not much evidence that countries...