Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Fresh Look At The Rotten Kid Theorem, Ted Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

Gary Becker's ``Rotten Kid Theorem'' asserts that if all family members receive gifts of money income from a benevolent household member, then even if the household head does not precommit to an incentive plan for family members, it will be in the interest of selfish family members to maximize total family income. We show by examples that the Rotten Kid theorem is not true without assuming transferable utility. We find a simple condition on utility functions that is necessary and sufficient for there to be the kind of transferable utility needed for a Rotten Kid Theorem. While restrictive, these conditions …

The Effects Of Cohort Size On Marriage Markets In Twentieth Century Sweden, Ted Bergstrom, David Lam

Ted C Bergstrom

Large, short-run fluctuations in the birth rate have been an important demographic feature of industrialized, low-fertility populations in the twentieth century. Since females normally marry men who are two or three years older than themselves, these fluctuations result in large imbalances between the size of male and female cohorts who would normally marry each other. These imbalances must somehow be resolved, either by a change in traditional patterns of age at marriage or by changes in the proportions of the population of one sex or the other who ever marry.

Following a suggestion of Becker (1974,1981), we have developed a …

Love And Spaghetti, The Opportunity Cost Of Virtue, Ted Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

This paper was written in the form of two puzzles. One puzzle concerns Romeo and Juliet who love spaghetti and each other. They wear flimsy clothing and have abdominal hedonimeters. The other puzzle asks who benefits from tax deductions to the rich for charitable deductions.