The article is concerned with understanding the impact of social preferences and wealth inequality on aggregate economic outcomes. We investigate how different manifestations of societal other-regarding preferences affect labor relationships and incentive contracts at the microeconomic level and...

The article is concerned with understanding the impact of social preferences and wealth inequality on aggregate economic outcomes. We investigate how different manifestations of other-regarding preferences affect incentive contracts at the microeconomic level and how these in turn translate into...

We consider the cost of providing incentives using tournaments when workers are inequity averse and performance evaluation is costly. The principal never benefits from empathy to align incentives in a moral hazard framework between the workers, but he may benefit from their propensity for envy...

This paper analyses the relationship between relative income concerns and individual wellbeing in an economy of heterogeneous firm-worker pairs. Specifically, we study incentive contracting under moral hazard when workers compare their earnings with the economy's average wage. At the aggregate...

We use a stylized model to show that, if transfers to the poor are founded on a security argument, there is a negative trade-o¤ between law enforcement expenditures and criminality. In contrast, if transfers are based on altruism, the correlation between the same variables may appear positive....

We use a stylized model to show that, if transfers to the poor are founded on a security argument, there is a negative trade-off between law enforcement expenditures and criminality. In contrast, if transfers are based on altruism, the correlation between the same variables may appear positive....