We quantify the size and tax-responsiveness of financial transfers made to heirs before death. The wealth of singles (including widows) with children declines substantially in anticipation of death. 92% of this decline is explained by transfers to children, while long-term care copayments can...

This study investigates the prevalence and extent of altruism by examining the relationship between parents' and their adult children's subjective well-being in a data set extracted from the German Socio-Economic Panel. In order to segregate the share of parents with altruistic preferences from...

We examine a “Rotten Kid” model (Becker 1974) where a player with social preferences interacts with an egoistic player. We assume that social preferences are intentionbased rather than outcome-based. In a very general multi-stage setting we show that any equilibrium must involve mutually...

Society’s demands for individual and corporate social responsibility as an alternative response to market and distributive failures are becoming increasingly prominent. We first draw on recent developments in the “psychology and economics” of prosocial behavior to shed light on this trend,...

In this paper we study the optimal forest conservation policy by a hyperbolically discounting society. Society comprises a series of non-overlapping imperfectly altruistic generations each represented by its own government. Under uncertainty about future pay-offs we determine, as solution of an...

Many types of economic and social activities involve significant behavioral complementarities (peer effects) with neighbors in the social network. The same activities often exert externalities that cumulate in "stocks" affecting agents' welfare and incentives. For instance, smoking is subject to...