Altruism, Cooperation, and Efficiency: Agricultural Production in Polygynous Households Altruism among family members can, in some cases, inhibit cooperation by increasing the utility that players expect to receive in a non-cooperative equilibrium. To test this, we examine agricultural productivity in polygynous households in West Africa. We find that cooperation is greater – production is more...

The economy is populated by a large number of infinitely lived agents. These agents are identical, and so we can effectively treat them as one. These agents consume, save in physical capital, and supply one unit of labor each period inelastically. Time runs from t = 0, . . . ,∞. The population at each point in time is Nt = (1+n) N0, with N0 given. Households get flow utility from consumption, C...

Households in this model consume goods, supply labor, hold money, and save through both bonds and capital (the households own the capital stock). The household block is a little different from how we’ve been working thus far. We assume that there is variable utilization of capital, ut. We assume that the household chooses ut and then leases capital services, k̂t = utkt to the firms, who in turn ...

Often the household environmental factors are combined with the household assets in explaining the economic differentials in population and health parameters of developing countries. Though the utility of wealth index (that combines household environment with assets) in explaining health and health care utilization is established, its utility as a proxy of economic measures is contested. In thi...

Abstract—In this article, a new method is proposed for the measuring of well-being inequality through a model composed of superimposing satisfaction waves. The displacement of households’ satisfactory state (i.e. satisfaction) is defined in a satisfaction string. The duration of the satisfactory state for a given period is measured in order to determine the relationship between utility and tota...

A fixed cost investment in home automation technology can eliminate consumers’ marginal costs of responding to changing demand conditions. We estimate the welfare effects of a home automation technology using a field experiment run by a large electric utility that randomly assigned both a technology and price treatment. Average treatment effects reveal that the home automation technology reduce...

Abstract—In this article, a new method is proposed for the measuring of well-being inequality through a model composed of superimposing satisfaction waves. The displacement of households’ satisfactory state (i.e. satisfaction) is defined in a satisfaction string. The duration of the satisfactory state for a given period is measured in order to determine the relationship between utility and tota...

This paper extends the heterogeneous agent overlapping generations model with bequests in Nishiyama (2000) by adding two-way intergenerational altruism and inter vivos transfers. Calibrating the model to the U.S. economy, the paper measures time preference and intergenerational altruism consistent with the economy¶s capital-output ratio and the sizes of intergenerational transfers. In the model...

background & purpose: in the health sector, in addition to the important consequence of treatment, health system should meet the expectations regarding the desirability of services. expectations and perceptions of patients about the desirability of services play an important role in selecting hospitals, their loyalty to the organization & replanning to purchase. thus the present study has been ...

This paper documents the extent to which homeowners use housing equity to smooth their marginal utility of consumption over time. Unlike drawing down other forms of saving, accessing accumulated home equity can be quite costly. As a result, households accumulating home equity could be liquidity constrained in the sense that they would like to access this equity to fund consumption but are unwil...