In this paper, we seek to examine the effect of social comparisons and of social capital on life satisfaction over a sample of Latin American countries. We test if, through social influence and exposure, social capital is either an enhancer or appeaser of the effect of social comparisons of...

This article examines the potential risks on consumption behavior of lump-sum payments. As a pension, lump-sum payments could be consumed too fast and generate an increase of poverty rates. We experimentally investigate consumption behavior in an inter-temporal decision-making setting. Subjects...

We analyze how the introduction of habits and aspirations affects the distribution of wealth when the labor productivity of individuals is subject to idiosyncratic shocks and when bequests arise from a joy-of-giving motive. In the presence of either bequests or aspirations, labor income shocks...

The existence of a private cost borne by audited taxpayers affects the tax enforcement policy. This is so because tax auditors will face now two sources of uncertainty, namely, the typical one associated with taxpayers’ income and that associated with the taxpayers’ idiosyncratic attitude...

We study how the introduction of consumption externalities affects the optimality of the dynamic equilibrium in an economy displaying dynastic altruism. When the bequest motive is inoperative consumption externalities affect the intertemporal margin between young and old consumption and thus...

In this paper, we characterize the relationship between the initial distribution of human capital and physical inheritances among individuals and the long-run distribution of these two variables. In a model with indivisible investment in education, we analyze how the initial distribution of...