We investigate the recent fee mechanism EIP1559 of the Ethereum network. Whereas previous studies have focused on myopic miners, we here focus on rational miners in the sense of having level-k foresight. We derive expressions for optimal miner behavior (in terms of setting block sizes) in the...

This paper examines the motivation for intergenerational transfers between adult children and their parents, and the nature of preferences for such giving behaviour, in an experimental setting. Participants in our experiment play a series of dictator games with parents and strangers, in which we...

Economists believe that a problem of team production results from the desirability of production in (sometimes large) groups, the difficulty of rewarding individual group members based on their (difficult or impossible to measure) individual contributions, and the presumed interest of each...

In the U.S. and Europe, a ban on a market in human organs has been in place since 1984. The system of organ procurement, therefore, relies on altruistic donation from stranger to stranger. The principle intellectual and policy issues surrounding organ procurement concern the question of whether,...

The purpose of this paper is to survey the theoretical literature on wealth transfer taxation. The focus is normative: we are looking at the design of an optimal tax structure from the standpoint of both equity and efficiency. The gist of this survey is that the optimal design crucially depends...

Most models of family transfers consider only two generations and focus on two motives: altruism and exchange. They also assume perfect substitution between inter vivos financial transfers and bequests to children. On the contrary, this survey of recent developments in the literature emphasizes...

Standard homo economicus lives in a world of complete markets and maximizes utility which is a function of his personal consumption. This approximation cannot account for parents making transfers to adult children, children taking care of old parents, nor for gifts, inheritance and many other...

Behind my reciprocation of a friend's gift may lie both instrumental reasons (I expect further future gifts) and communicative reasons (I want to establish or confirm a friendship per se ). In a theory of rational individual action, such communicative reasons can be incorporated as an argument...