This paper considers the potential for the cultural transmission of attitudes toward work, welfare, and individual responsibility to explain the intergenerational correlation in welfare receipt. Specifically, we investigate whether 18-year olds' views about social benefits and the drivers of...

Sharing is a norm in many societies. We present a theoretical model on the trade-off between sharing and investment which we test on data from tailors in Burkina Faso. The empirical results support the idea that there are two behavioural patterns: entrepreneurs following an 'insurance regime'...

We analyze whether the availability of formal insurance products affects informal solidarity transfers in two independent behavioral experiments in the Philippines. The first experiment allows for communication, non-anonymity and unrestricted transfers. The second experiment mimics a laboratory...

In December 2005, the Belgian government adopted the law on the Intergenerational Solidarity Pact (ISP) aiming at increasing the employment rate of older workers. The main policies of the ISP consist in a pension bonus, reductions in employers' social security contributions and measures...

This paper investigates the crowding out of informal support among peers by the introduction of formal insurance. We show that the availability of insurance changes people's intrinsic motivation to support others. We report results from a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted in Cambodia. Half...

In this study we experimentally investigate whether solidarity, which is a crucial base for informal insurance arrangements in developing countries, is sensitive to the extent to which individuals can influence their risk exposure. With slum dwellers of Nairobi our design measures subjects'...

Negative income shocks can either be the consequence of risky choices or random events. A growing literature analyzes the role of responsibility for neediness for informal financial support of individuals facing negative income shocks based on randomized experiments. In this paper, we show that...