The Organization Of Family Interactions: Minimizing Transaction Costs And Strategic Behavior

Donald Wittman

Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz

Abstract: The optimal organization of the family requires that relations are structured so that non-cooperative game playing is minimized and transaction costs are reduced. I show that therapeutic advice for behavior within the family is to create a functioning property rights system. Punishment is shown to be inferior to setting limits because the first encourages strategic game playing. I show why there is conflict between parent and their child even when the parent maximizes the child’s expected discounted utility. In addition, I provide a model of the intergenerational transfer of behavior.

Keywords: internal organization of the family; transaction cost; psychology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-02-01
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/9xg179zp.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:ucscec:qt9xg179zp

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().