Transplants of donated stem cells save the lives of many patients with blood diseases. Donation is somewhat painful, but rarely has lasting adverse effects. Patients can accept transplants only from donors with compatible immune systems. Those lacking a sibling match must seek donations from the...

This paper is an advertisement for some facts and ideas that I think likely to lead to a richer theory of the economics of the family. The discussion references many papers from anthropology and biology. Because of the intimate connection between the family and reproduction, it should not be...

Gary Becker devotes a chapter of his Treatise on the Family to Polygamy and Monogamy in marriage markets. The inclusion of polygamy in his analysis is more than an intriguing curiosum. Although overt polygamy is rare in our own society, it is a very common mode of family organization around the...

How well does competitive theory explain the outcome in experimental markets? The authors examined the results of a large number of classroom trading experiments that used a pit-trading design found in Experiments with Economic Principles, an introductory economics textbook by Bergstrom and...

This paper argues that the economics of the family can be much enriched by incorporating recent developments in evolutionary biology, animal behavior studies, cultural evolution, anthropology, and game theory. Evolutionary foundations of sympathy between relatives are explored. Applications of...

This paper presents a theoretical model of political support for the public provision of day care. In an economy where there are high taxes on wage income, sel sh taxpayers with no children in the day care system may favor substantial public subsidies to day care because such subsidies induce...

This paper explores the evolutionary foundations of altruism among siblings and extends the biologists kin-selection theory to a richer class of games between relatives. We show that a population will resist invasion by dominant mutant genes if individuals maximize a semi-Kantian utility...

The authors describe a classroom experiment designed to present the idea of two-sided matching, the concept of a stable assignment, and the Gale-Shapley deferred-acceptance mechanism. Participants need no prior training in economics or game theory, but the exercise will also interest trained...