In this paper a particular market failure that may lead to inefficiently low equilibrium fertility and therefore to a need for government intervention are analysed. The friction which is investigated is related to the ownership of children. If parents have no claim on their children’s...

Empirical evidence suggests that money in the hands of mothers (as opposed to their husbands) benefits children. Does this observation imply that targeting transfers on women is good development policy? In this paper they develop a series of non-cooperative family bargaining models to understand...