This paper uses detailed diary information from the British Family Expenditure Survey (FES) to investigate the expenditure patterns of school-age children. We estimate a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System, and find that, whilst most commodities are normal goods, sweets and toys are luxury...

This research is concerned with the demand for lottery tickets and uses data for the UK National Lottery that records the behaviour, incomes and characteristics of almost 10,000 individuals. Some of the data relates to people surveyed during a "double rollover" - the jackpot had been enhanced by...

Recent terrorist attacks such as the attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001 have generated new interest in the debate on capital punishment. It has been suggested that support for the death penalty could be higher in the wake of terrorist activity. Using data from the Australian...

This paper looks inside the “black box” of the family and examines the determinants of inter vivos transfers in the form of allowances given to children. We consider in a simple model two main competing explanations for the transfer of money from parents to children in the form of regular...

We investigate the ability of expected utility theory to account for simultaneous gambling and insurance. Contrary to a previous claim that borrowing and lending in perfect capital markets rules out a demand for gambles, we show that expected utility theory with non-concave utility functions can...

We explore the possibility that a systematic relationship exists between employment within a particular type of contract and risk preference. We exploit a set of proxies for risk preference, whereby some of the proxies capture risk loving behaviour (expenditure on gambling, smoking and alcohol)...