If gifts are reciprocated in the future, intra-household distribution of resources will depend on premarital gifts such as dowry, bride-price and parents’ gifts to a child such as schooling and nurturing. If such social norms of reciprocity exist, parental income effects on their child’s human capital will be asymmetric, and the effect will depend on the amount of intra-household transfers made...

In experimental partnership dissolution problems with complete information, the divide-and-choose mechanism is significantly superior to the winner’s-bid auction. The performance of divide-and-choose is mainly affected by reciprocity issues and not by bounded rationality. The performance of the winner’s-bid auction is significantly affected by bounded rationality. Contrary to theoretical predic...

In experimental games, we observe the following phenomena: (1) many subjects cooperate contrary to their material interest, (2) they cooperate in a reciprocal manner, (3) subjects often punish those others who behave unkindly, and (4) previous history usually influences subjects’ choices. We propose a simple game-theoretical model to account for these and other experimental phenomena, and compa...

Two conversion schemes are usually employed for assessing personalincome inequality from household equivalent incomes: to weight household units by size or by needs. Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study, the authors show the sensitivity of country inequality rankings to conversion schemes and explain the finding by means of inequality decomposition. A bootstrap approach is implemented to...

This article reexamines the problem of labor exploitation in advanced capitalist economies, especially the United States. The article specifies the concept of labor exploitation by using both the Marxian and marginalist notions and measures. The implicit neoclassical presumption of no or little labor exploitation in a capitalist economy is rejected by the results. The alternative heterodox argu...

We consider the generalization of Shapley and Scarf’s (1974) [Shapley, L., Scarf’s, H., 1974. On cores and indivisibility. Journal of Mathematical Economics 1, 23–37.] model of trading indivisible objects (houses) to so-called multiple-type housing markets. We show that the prominent solution for these markets, the coordinate-wise core rule, is second-best incentive compatible. © 2007 Elsevier ...

We study solutions that choose lotteries for profiles of preferences defined over sure alternatives. We define Nash equilibria based on “stochastic dominance” comparisons and study the implementability of solutions in such equilibria. We show that a Maskin-style invariance condition is necessary and sufficient for implementability. Our results apply to an abstract Arrovian environment as well a...

This paper considers the functioning approach to the standard of living. It shows that, in evaluating standards of living, one is faced with deep-rooted tensions between the principle of minimal relativism, which requires some minimal respect for differences between the evaluations of different individuals and/or the differences between the norms of different communities, and the principle of d...

Most research in economics studies agents somehow motivated by outcomes. Here, we study agents motivated by procedures instead, where procedures are defined independently of an outcome. To that end, we design procedures which yield the same expected outcomes or carry the same information on others’ intentions while they have different outcomeinvariant properties. Agents are experimentally confi...