The Fetters of the Sib: Weber Meets Darwin

Ingela Alger () and Jörgen W. Weibull

No 682, Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance from Stockholm School of Economics

Abstract: We analyze the effects of family ties on the incentives for productive effort. A family is modelled as a pair of altruistic siblings. Each sibling exerts effort to produce output under uncertainty and siblings may transfer output to each other. We show that altruism has a non-monotonic effect on effort. We study how this effect depends on "climate," the magnitude and volatility of returns to effort. We also analyze the evolutionary robustness of family ties and how this robustness depends on climate. We find that family ties will be stronger in milder climates than in harsher climates.

Keywords: altruism; family ties; moral hazard; evolutionary robustness (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-evo
Date: 2007-11-13
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Working Paper: The fetters of the sib: Weber meets Darwin (2008)
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