This work presents a theoretical framework to study if the motive for money-transfers within families is altruism or exchange. We propose models which explicitly incorporate transfers on education as an additional family transfer. Our models allows us to discriminate between the two possible...

We study an overlapping generations economy with altruistic agents in which the productivity of a child?s labour endowment depends on an idiosyncratic shock and on the resources spent by her parent in education her. The parent cannot borrow but can leave a nonnegative bequest which earns a...

Public services provision depends on tax proceeds. The tax rate to finance public school is chosen through majority voting. Under the monotonicity condition implying that the preferred tax rate is decreasing in income, the literature predicts that the median voter is decisive and poor agents...

We experimentally study the e¤ect of time on altruism. By postponing payments in a standard Dictator game, subjects allocate a future payment between themselves and others. Since both the payoffs of the Dictator and the Receiver are delayed until the same time, standard intertemporal utility...

In this paper we have introduced and parameterized the concept of ?group cohesion? in a model of local interaction with a population divided into groups. This allows us to control the level of ?isolation? of these groups: We thus analyze if the degree of group cohesion is relevant to achieve an...