Kinship, Incentives and Evolution – revised version: Kinship, Incentives, and Evolution
Abstract
We analyze how family ties affect incentives, with focus on the strategic interaction between two mutually altruistic siblings. The siblings exert effort to produce output under uncertainty, and they may transfer output to each other. With equally altruistic siblings, their equilibrium effort is nonmonotonic in the common degree of altruism, and it depends on the harshness of the environment. We define a notion of local evolutionary stability of degrees of sibling altruism and show that this degree is lower than the kinship-relatedness factor. Numerical simulations show how family ties vary with the environment, and how this affects economic outcomes.Download Info
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Paper provided by Carleton University, Department of Economics in its series Carleton Economic Papers with number 07-13.Length: 34 pages
Date of creation: 13 Nov 2007
Date of revision: 17 Sep 2010
Publication status: Published: – revised version: Kinship, Incentives, and Evolution, American Economic Review, Vol. 100, No. 4 (September 2010), pp. 1725–1758
Handle: RePEc:car:carecp:07-13
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Keywords:Find related papers by JEL classification:
- D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
- D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy
- J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2007-11-24 (All new papers)
- NEP-CBE-2007-11-24 (Cognitive & Behavioural Economics)
- NEP-EVO-2007-11-24 (Evolutionary Economics)
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