This paper presents a brief exposition of three theoretical models of household behavior and shows that these models have very different implications for bequest motives and bequest division, surveys previous empirical studies on bequest motives and bequest division, presents unique survey data...

In this paper, we first provide a brief exposition of the simplest version of the selfish life cycle model or hypothesis, which is undoubtedly the most widely used theoretical model of household behavior in economics, and then survey the literature on household saving behavior in Japan (with...