We present a game-theoretical model that accounts for abundant experimental evidence from games with non-binding communication (‘cheap talk’). It is based on two key ideas: People are conditionally averse to break norms of honesty and fairness (i.e., the emotional cost of breaking a norm is...

Through an investigation of parental motives, this paper examines how parents decide on the allocation of their resources within the family when there are several offspring. From a theoretical viewpoint, inter vivos transfers may be explained either by altruism or by an exchange motive. Though...

Steady state levels of population and per capita income are examined using a Becker-Barro (1988) style of model of an economy with identical altruistic parents bearing costly children who receive bequests of capital and land. Inspired by the work of North (1981) and others, the problem of open...

Morally motivated individuals behave more cooperatively than predicted by standard theory. Hence,if a firm can attract workers who are strongly motivated by ethical concerns, moral hazard problems like shirking can be reduced. We show that employers may be able to use the firm’s corporate...

We study the fair allocation of a one-dimensional and perfectly divisible good when individuals have other-regarding preferences. Assuming no legitimate claims and purely ordinal preferences, how should society measure social welfare so as to satisfy basic principles of efficiency and fairness?...

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program is one of the most important anti-poverty policies worldwide. In this document, I study the economic effects of this program by using a stylized dynamic general equilibrium model. I look at the program’s impact on output, human capital, poverty and...

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program is one of the most important anti-poverty policies worldwide. In this document, I study the economic effects of this program by using a stylized dynamic general equilibrium model. I look at the program’s impact on output, human capital, poverty and...

While the various streams of environmentalism agree in claiming that the current patterns of economic activity are unsustainable for natural resources, they disagree in answering the following question: who is the responsible? Two different answers have been provided: the people or the...

A small but growing body of literature uses overlapping generations (OLG) models to study environmental policy for long-lived problems such as climate change. An OLG model, unlike the infinitely lived representative agent model, distinguishes between impatience with respect to one¡¯s own...

Although evidence accrues in biology, anthropology and experimental economics that homo sapiens is a cooperative species, the reigning assumption in economic theory is that individuals optimize in an autarkic manner (as in Nash and Walrasian equilibrium). I here postulate a cooperative kind of...