In spite of an identical initial condition, why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? To address this question, this paper constructs a simple theoretical model that incorporates human infrastructure and child labor The first part of the paper shows that the condition of...

This paper investigates how the heterogenous incomes and preferences of potential donors affect the timing of contribution decisions when it is endogenously determined by contributors themselves. More specifically, we use a simple setting with two donors, Cobb-Douglas preferences, and complete...

We investigate how income inequality affects social welfare in a model of voluntary contributions to multiple pure public goods. Itaya, de Meza, and Myles (1997) show that the maximization of social welfare precludes income equality in a single pure public good model. In contrast, we show that...

We consider a two-period overlapping generations model where agents face the uncertainty of intergenerational transfers from their children. To avoid this kind of risk, agents have an incentive to share the risk within the same generation. However, there exists an information asymmetry about the...

In this paper, we use a two-period overlapping generations model to examine the behavior of an economy that incorporates intergenerational transfers of time. In the first part, we describe the dynamics and steady state of the economy in which there is no government. We show that the rate of life...

This note develops a one-sector, two-period, overlapping generations model that incorporates endogenous labor-care choice. Care choice is modeled by allowing young agents to participate in the production of household health status. Using this model, we derive the steady-state equilibrium dynamics.

This paper reexamines results of Konrad and Lommerud (2000). They construct a two-stage game model of a family. We show that their result crucially depends on their linear payoff function and obtain an opposite result if the interaction within a family is represented by a non-linear function;...

Rising longevity has led to population aging in developed countries, causing increasing concerns about its economic impact. Specially, the trend of population aging increases health expenditure in developed countries, and 70% to 80% of health expenditure is funded by public sector. Therefore,...