Traditionally, giving in dictator games was assumed to signal preferences over others' payoffs. To date, several studies find that dictator game giving breaks down under conditions designed to increase dictators' anonymity or if an option to take money obscures the purpose of the task. Giving is...

This paper presents a characterization of a welfare index for the evaluation of primary goods (to be understood as those goods that all agents should enjoy equally). The welfare associated with a given distribution of n primary goods among m agents is measured as the sum of n real-valued...

Social preferences have been shown to be an important determinant of economic decision making for many adults. We present a large-scale experiment with 883 children and adolescents, aged eight to seventeen years. Participants make decisions in eight simple, one-shot allocation tasks, allowing us...

Leaky-bucket transactions can be regarded as a generalization of the transfer principle allowing for transaction costs. In its most rudimentary form, leaky-bucket transactions trace out the maximum leakage of transaction costs such that a transfer still pays at the margin. Yet - to pay at the...

Leaky-bucket transactions can be regarded as income transfers allowing for transaction costs. In its most rudimentary form, leaky-bucket transactions trace out the maximum "leakage" of transaction costs before income inequality is exacerbated, or before a welfare loss is experienced. This notion...

The literature on social preferences provides overwhelming evidence of departures from pure self-interest of individuals. Experiments show that people care about others' well-being and their relative standing. This paper investigates whether this type of behavior persists when risk comes into...

In this paper, we address the question of optimal wage and income dispersion in a growing economy. If already in the two-persons-case we have to deal with the fact of different marginal products of labor, there are two solutions in principle. Either two different wages are paid (at unanimous...

In this paper, we first model the dynamics of an economy, making use of a simple, almost trivial circular flow analysis. Then, we demonstrate the effects of "keeping up with the Joneses" as well as of "keeping ahead of the Smiths" in private consumption and the role of innovation and imitation...

Why do people in rich countries not transfer more of their income to people in the world's poorest countries? To study this question and the relative importance of needs, entitlements, and nationality in people's social preferences, we conducted a real effort fairness experiment where people in...

Evaluation of climate policies and other issues requires a variable population setting where population is endogenously determined. We propose and axiomatize the rank-discounted critical-level utilitarian social welfare order. It is shown to ll out the space between critical-level utilitarianism...