Altruism and welfare when preferences are endogenous

Anders Poulsen () and Odile Poulsen

No 09-02, Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Abstract: We study whether an altruistic preference can survive in competition with other preferences and investigate the relationship between the equilibrium proportion of altruism and equilibrium material and subjective welfare. Altruism survives whenever preferences are sufficiently observable. Altruism can co-exist with reciprocal and materialistic preferences. Any policy that increases the equilibrium proportion of altruism raises economic prosperity but can reduce some people's subjective equilibrium welfare. Some of the policies that increase the equilibrium proportion of altruism are, at first sight at least, counter-intuitive. There can be a non-monotonic relationship between the degree of anonymity of interaction in society (the probability that an individual knows other people's preferences) in society and welfare.

Keywords: altriusm; endogenous preferences; material and subjective welfare; indirect evoluationary approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 D60 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-10-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ueaeco.github.io/working-papers/papers/cbess/UEA-CBESS-09-02.pdf main text (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:uea:wcbess:09-02

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Reception, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Cara Liggins ().