IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/tuewef/62.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the economics of others

Author

Listed:
  • Stark, Oded

Abstract

We relate to others in two important ways: we care about others, and we care about how we fare in comparison to others. In some contexts, these two forms of relatedness interact. Caring about others can conveniently be labeled altruism. Caring about how we fare in comparison with others who fare better than ourselves can conveniently be labeled relative deprivation. I provide examples of domains in which the incorporation of altruism and relative deprivation can point to novel perspectives and suggest rethinking, and possibly revising, longheld views. And I show that there are domains in which consideration of relative deprivation can substitute for the prevalence of altruism, and vice versa. I conclude that this is a fascinating sphere for research on economics and social behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Stark, Oded, 2013. "On the economics of others," University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics 62, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:tuewef:62
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/87700/1/77087892X.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stark, Oded & Zhang, Junsen, 2002. "Counter-compensatory inter-vivos transfers and parental altruism: compatibility or orthogonality?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 19-25, January.
    2. Stark, Oded & Lucas, Robert E B, 1988. "Migration, Remittances, and the Family," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(3), pages 465-481, April.
    3. Bergstrom, Theodore C & Stark, Oded, 1993. "How Altruism Can Prevail in an Evolutionary Environment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 149-155, May.
    4. C. Simon Fan & Oded Stark, 2007. "A Social Proximity Explanation of the Reluctance to Assimilate," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 55-63, February.
    5. Stark, Oded & Kobus, Martyna & Jakubek, Marcin, 2012. "A concern about low relative income, and the alignment of utilitarianism with egalitarianism," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 114(3), pages 235-238.
    6. Jennifer Lauby & Oded Stark, 1988. "Individual Migration as a Family Strategy: Young Women in the Philippines," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(3), pages 157-173.
    7. Oded Stark, 2009. "Reasons for Remitting," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 10(3), pages 147-158, July.
    8. Stark, Oded & Dorn, Agnieszka, 2013. "Do family ties with those left behind intensify or weaken migrants’ assimilation?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-5.
    9. Lucas, Robert E B & Stark, Oded, 1985. "Motivations to Remit: Evidence from Botswana," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(5), pages 901-918, October.
    10. Stark, Oded, 1989. "Altruism and the Quality of Life," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 86-90, May.
    11. Stark, Oded & Wang, You Qiang, 2005. "Towards a Theory of Self-Segregation as a Response to Relative Deprivation: Steady-State Outcomes and Social Welfare," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 223-242.
    12. Sorger, Gerhard & Stark, Oded, 2013. "Income redistribution going awry: The reversal power of the concern for relative deprivation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1-9.
    13. Stark, Oded & Fan, C. Simon, 2006. "A Reluctance to Assimilate," Discussion Papers 7125, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).
    14. Bernheim, B Douglas & Stark, Oded, 1988. "Altruism within the Family Reconsidered: Do Nice Guys Finish Last?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(5), pages 1034-1045, December.
    15. Stark, Oded, 1993. "Nonmarket transfers and altruism," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 1413-1424, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bellemare, Charles, 2007. "A life-cycle model of outmigration and economic assimilation of immigrants in Germany," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 553-576, April.
    2. Iddisah Sulemana & Louis Doabil & Ebenezer Bugri Anarfo, 2019. "International Remittances and Subjective Wellbeing in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Micro-level Study," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 524-539, September.
    3. Alice Mesnard, 2004. "Temporary migration and capital market imperfections," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 56(2), pages 242-262, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stark, Oded & Jakubek, Marcin, 2013. "Migration networks as a response to financial constraints: Onset, and endogenous dynamics," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 1-7.
    2. Bergstrom, Theodore C & Stark, Oded, 1993. "How Altruism Can Prevail in an Evolutionary Environment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 149-155, May.
    3. Stark, Oded & Bielawski, Jakub & Jakubek, Marcin, 2015. "The impact of the assimilation of migrants on the well-being of native inhabitants: A theory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 71-78.
    4. Stark, Oded & Dorn, Agnieszka, 2013. "Do family ties with those left behind intensify or weaken migrants’ assimilation?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-5.
    5. Wolff, Francois-Charles & Laferrere, Anne, 2006. "Microeconomic models of family transfers," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 889-969, Elsevier.
    6. MoonJoong Tcha & Fiona Lio, 2002. "An Analysis of Food Aid and Altruism," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 02-19, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    7. Arrondel, Luc & Masson, Andre, 2006. "Altruism, exchange or indirect reciprocity: what do the data on family transfers show?," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 14, pages 971-1053, Elsevier.
    8. Oded Stark & Walter Hyll, 2011. "On the Economic Architecture of the Workplace: Repercussions of Social Comparisons among Heterogeneous Workers," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(2), pages 349-375.
    9. Bettin, Giulia & Lucchetti, Riccardo & Zazzaro, Alberto, 2012. "Endogeneity and sample selection in a model for remittances," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 370-384.
    10. Stark, Oded & Kosiorowski, Grzegorz, 2024. "An optimal allocation of asylum seekers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 1-11.
    11. Cornelia Serena, PASCA, 2016. "Monetary Remittance - Romania Case Study," Contemporary Economy Journal, Constantin Brancoveanu University, vol. 1(3), pages 50-59.
    12. Donald Cox & Oded Stark, 1993. "Intergenerational Transfers And Demonstration Effect," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 244, Boston College Department of Economics.
    13. Ralph Chami & Connel Fullenkamp & Samir Jahjah, 2005. "Are Immigrant Remittance Flows a Source of Capital for Development?," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 52(1), pages 55-81, April.
    14. Anders Poulsen & Odile Poulsen, 2009. "Altruism and welfare when preferences are endogenous," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) 09-02, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    15. Tóbiás, Áron, 2023. "Rational Altruism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 50-80.
    16. Aísa, R. & Andaluz, J. & Larramona, G., 2011. "How does bargaining power affect remittances?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 47-54.
    17. Chowdhury Murshed & Das Anupam, 2016. "Remittance Behaviour of Chinese and Indian Immigrants in Canada," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 67(2), pages 185-208, August.
    18. Ingela Alger & Jörgen W. Weibull, 2006. "Altruism and Climate," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 643, Boston College Department of Economics.
    19. Oded Stark & Franz Rendl & Marcin Jakubek, 2012. "The merger of populations, the incidence of marriages, and aggregate unhappiness," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 331-344, April.
    20. Agata Górny & Sabina Toruńczyk-Ruiz, 2015. "Relative deprivation and ‘the diversity effect’ in explaining neighbourhood attachment: Alternative or complementary mechanisms?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(5), pages 984-990, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Altruism; Relative deprivatio; Economic and social behavior;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • F24 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Remittances
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:tuewef:62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wftuede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.