This discussion paper led to a publication in href=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jae.1071/fullJournal of Applied Econometrics, 24(6), 993-1023.Parents’ transfer motives are important for understanding, e.g., macroeconomics, income (re)distribution, savings, and public finance....

The empirical evidence suggests that parents use inter vivos gifts (i.e., transfers of tangible and financial property) to compensate less well off children whereas post mortem bequests are divided equally among siblings. We study a theoretical model assuming, first, that the amounts given is...

Suppose an altruistic person, A, is willing to transfer resources to a second person, B, if B comes upon hard times. If B anticipates that A will act in this manner, B will save too little from both agents' point of view. This is the Samaritan's dilemma. The logic of the dilemma has been...

Parents' transfer motives are important for understanding, e.g., macroeconomics, income (re)distribution, savings, and public finance. Using data from six biennial waves of the Health and Retirement Study 1992-2002, we estimate grouped tobit-type latent variable models with multi-level error...

Most models of family transfers consider only two generations and focus on two motives: altruism and exchange. They also assume perfect substitution between inter vivos financial transfers and bequests to children. On the contrary, this survey of recent developments in the literature emphasizes...

Standard homo economicus lives in a world of complete markets and maximizes utility which is a function of his personal consumption. This approximation cannot account for parents making transfers to adult children, children taking care of old parents, nor for gifts, inheritance and many other...