There is a large empirical literature on policy measures targeted at children but surprisingly very little theoretical foundation to ground the debate on the optimality of the different instruments. In the present paper, we examine the merit of targeting children through two general policies,...

We explore the extent to which the structure of incentives affects trust. We hypothesize that the degree to which different incentive mechanisms emphasize competition (via the perceived intentions of others) and entitlements (via the perceived property rights) will affect individuals' subsequent...

Experimental evidence is used to deduce players' beliefs about their opponents' concern for others. The experiment is a sequential public good provision game with a provision point and two different refund rules. A theory is constructed to show how early contributions should change with the...

One of the main issues in the climate policy agenda, the timing of abatement efforts, hinges on the uncertainties of climate change risks and technological evolution. We use a stochastic optimization framework and jointly explore these two features. First, we embed in the model future potential...

For a sequential, two-period decision problem with uncertainty and under broad conditions (non-finite sample set, endogenous risk, active learning and stochastic dynamics), a general sufficient condition is provided to compare the optimal initial decisions with or without information arrival in...

We demonstrate that a simple model, constructed on the premise that people are motivated by both their pecuniary payoff and their relative payoff standing, organizes a large and seemingly disparate set of laboratory observations as one consistent pattern. The model is incomplete information but...

This paper critically assesses widely applied methods of Gini decomposition by income sources and population subgroups. We point to common pitfalls in the interpretation of decomposition results and show that marginal efects provide the only meaningful way to examine the relevance of income...

Using data on inequality for 21 OECD countries over the period 1870–2011 this paper tests the Piketty hypothesis that income inequality is likely to grow in the 21st century. It is shown that the null hypothesis of trend stationarity of inequality cannot be rejected at conventional...

We experimentally investigate the effects of two different sources of heterogeneity – capability and valuation – on the provision of public goods when punishment is possible or not. We find that compared to homogeneous groups, asymmetric valuations for the public good have negative effects...

We explore in this paper the axiomatic approach to the problem of sharing the revenue from museum passes. We formalize two models for this problem on the grounds of two different informational bases. In both models, we provide axiomatic rationale for natural rules to solve the problem. We,...