Children who can count on support from altruistic parents may not try hard to succeed in the labor market. Moreover, parental altruism makes withdrawal of such support non-credible. To promote work effort, parents may want to instill norms which later cause their children to experience guilt or...

Sweden experienced exeptionally fast economic growth during the century-long period 1870-1970. This illustrates that a decentralized market economy, highly open to international transactions, may be quite conductive to sustained productivity growth if the government fulfills its 'classical'...

The paper analyses the interaction between economic incentives and work norms in the context of social insurance. If the work norm is endogenous in the sense that it is weaker when the population share of beneficiaries is higher, then voters will choose less generous benefits than otherwise. We...