Kinship, Incentives and Evolution

Ingela Alger () and Jörgen W. Weibul ()
Additional contact information
Jörgen W. Weibul: Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, http://www2.hhs.se/personal/Weibull/
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Jörgen W. Weibull

No 07-13, Carleton Economic Papers from Carleton University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We analyze how family ties affect incentives, with focus on the strategic interaction between two mutually altruistic siblings. The siblings exert exert to produce output under uncertainty, and they may transfer output to each other. With equally altruistic siblings, their equilibrium effort is non-monotonic 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.

Keywords: altruism; family ties; free-riding; empathy; Hamilton's rule; evolutionary stability. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 D13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-evo
Date: 2007-11-13
View citations in EconPapers

Published: Carleton Economic Paper

Downloads: (external link)
http://www2.carleton.ca/economics/ccms/wp-content/ccms-files/algerweibull09.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:car:carecp:07-13

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Carleton Economic Papers from Carleton University, Department of Economics
Address: 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa Ontario, K1S 5B6 Canada
Series data maintained by Deirdre Nelson ().