This paper uses Panel Study of Income Dynamics data on the extended family to test whether inter vivos transfers from parents to children are motivated by altruism. Specifically, the paper tests whether an increase by one dollar in the income of parents actively making transfers to a child...

Why didn't the Japanese miracle take place before World War II? The culprit we identify is a barrier that kept prewar agricultural employment constant. Using a standard neoclassical two-sector growth model, we show that the barrier-induced sectoral distortion and an ensuring lack of capital...

Altruism has the well-known neutrality implication that the family's demand for commodities is invariant to the division of resources within the family. The author tests this by estimating Engel curves on a cross section of Japanese extended families forming two-generation households. He finds...