Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Altruism'

Esta tesis es una colección de ensayos centrados en la economía del desarrollo. La primera parte está dedicada al análisis de las tarifas de transacción sobre el comportamiento de las remesas y cómo la existencia de los costos de transacción afecta la prueba canónica del motivo de remesas altruista. La segunda parte está dedicada al análisis empírico y la estimación del efecto de la migración familiar en Indonesia sobre la inversión en el capital humano de sus hijos. Nuestro trabajo contribuye a la discusión en curso en economía del desarrollo sobre cómo la migración y los flujos de capital afectan tanto a quienes se quedan atrás como a las generaciones futuras que podrían cosechar los frutos de las inversiones realizadas por sus progenitores. La literatura económica sobre remesas no se ha fijado en cuál es el motivo principal de los grandes flujos de capital transferidos por los migrantes a sus países de origen. En el primer capítulo, investigamos el papel de las tarifas de transferencia y el costo en el que incurren los remitentes migrantes con el motivo de envío altruista. Exploramos un tratamiento teórico del problema de los costos de transacción inducidos por la existencia de una tarifa para enviar capital entre dos hogares, y cómo la distorsión afecta el comportamiento de las remesas indirectamente a través de efectos intertemporales en las decisiones de ahorro. Si bien aún no hemos generalizado nuestros resultados a la clase de funciones convexas para un costo de transferencia, mostramos en un modelo simple de dos períodos que las remesas disminuyen en función del aumento de las remesas debido al aumento teórico de los ahorros que la existencia de tarifas más altas induce Luego preguntamos cómo la existencia de un costo de transacción inducido por una tarifa de transferencia afecta la prueba canónica del motivo altruista para las transferencias entre hogares, primero elucidado por Becker (1974). Aquí encontramos que las distorsiones de los costos de transferencia tienen un impacto negativo en la inferencia de altruismo desde el límite teórico basado en la prueba de Becker. Finalmente, simulamos el modelo en el contexto de la comunidad migrante cubana en los EE. UU. Encontramos, en un modelo sin costo, que la serie cronológica agregada de los flujos de remesas observados se explica principalmente por el altruismo; y que la tarifa de transacción calibrada suponiendo que los migrantes son altruistas se acerca bastante a las tarifas promedio reportadas en la literatura para las remesas a Cuba. Argumentamos que esto evidencia la necesidad de considerar el alcance del panorama de remesas al inferir el motivo de este comportamiento, especialmente el altruista. En el segundo capítulo, cambiamos el enfoque a la migración de los hogares y el resultado asociado en el logro escolar de los niños. Este trabajo es relevante dados los crecientes flujos migratorios dentro y entre los países que pueden tener efectos perjudiciales para la familia. Como tal, los efectos de la migración en los hijos del hogar han sido un tema constante dentro de la literatura de desarrollo debido a las diversas dimensiones a través de las cuales la migración puede afectarlos. Para explorar este tema, pasamos a la Encuesta de Vida Familiar de Indonesia, un panel longitudinal de datos mantenido por la Corporación RAND. Primero analizamos cómo la migración interna en general afecta las primas salariales, dado que la literatura sobre migración encuentra evidencia de que las primas salariales esperadas entre los mercados laborales son la principal motivación para la migración. Luego observamos cómo la migración familiar afecta específicamente el logro escolar en los niños migrantes. Nuestro análisis es de naturaleza descriptiva, pero apunta a asociaciones positivas en ambos casos, con la migración familiar reduciendo el riesgo de salir de los niveles de escolaridad superiores en un país donde el gobierno todavía está combatiendo activamente el trabajo infantil, a pesar de su ilegalidad. Tomamos estos dos hallazgos cualitativos del segundo capítulo para desarrollar en el capítulo tres un modelo intergeneracional simple de migración familiar e inversión en el capital humano de un niño. La investigación de un mecanismo de selección plausible que plagó la endogeneidad en el trabajo descriptivo nos permite no solo comentar si existe un efecto causal sino también sobre la magnitud y dirección de los efectos. Al llevar a cabo experimentos de políticas, demostramos que inducir la migración familiar a través de subsidios completos (o casi completos), especialmente entre hogares poco calificados, lleva a salarios promedio más altos en la próxima generación que en el caso base donde las familias están vinculadas a su lugar de origen. Finalmente, si bien relajar el costo de migración en nuestro modelo estimado conduce a mejoras, también demostramos que el resultado de política más barato podría ser relajar los costos de oportunidad de educar que aún existen en Indonesia, cuyos efectos son mayores y los costos posiblemente más bajos que una política de migración lograría. Si bien un subsidio de migración total puede parecer extremo, observamos que el gobierno de Indonesia ha proporcionado a los empobrecidos jawaneses la oportunidad de trasladarse ellos y sus familias a otras islas dentro de Indonesia sin costo a través de programas de transmigración. También argumentamos que el último resultado no disminuye los efectos de la migración, sino que la mejora a medida que las aparentes disparidades entre los mercados de trabajo están favoreciendo empíricamente la migración y justifica una mayor consideración de las inversiones regionales en capital humano.
This thesis is a collection of essays focused on developmental economics. The first portion is dedicated to the analysis of transaction fees on remitting behavior and how the existence of transaction costs impact the canonical test of the altruistic remittance motive. The second portion is dedicated to the empirical analysis and estimation of the effect of family migration in Indonesia on the investment in their children's human capital. Our work contributes to the ongoing discussion in developmental economics on how migration and capital flows impact both those who stay behind and the future generations who might reap the fruits of the investments made by their progenitors. The economic literature on remittances has not settled on what is the driving motive for the large flows of capital transferred by migrants to their home countries. In the first chapter we investigate the role of transfer fees and the cost incurred by migrant remitters on the altruistic remitting motive. We explore a theoretical treatment of the problem of transaction costs induced by the existence of a fee to send capital between two households, and how the distortion affects remitting behavior indirectly through inter-temporal effects on savings decisions. While we have not yet generalized our results to the class of convex functions for a transfer cost, we show in a simple two period model that remittances decrease as a function of increasing remittance fees due to the theoretical increase in savings that the existence of higher fees induces. We then ask how the existence of a transaction cost induced by a transfer fee affects the canonical test of the altruistic motive for inter-household transfers, first elucidated by Becker (1974). Here we find that the distortions from transfer costs negatively impact the inference of altruism from the theoretical limit based on Becker's test. Finally, we calibrate the model in the context of the Cuban migrant community in the U.S. We find, in a no cost model, that the aggregate time series of remittance flows observed is mostly explained by altruism; and that the calibrated transaction fee assuming migrants are altruistic comes fairly close to the average fees reported in the literature for remittances to Cuba. We argue that this evidences the need to consider the scope of the remittance landscape when inferring the motive of this behavior, especially the altruistic one. In the second chapter we shift focus to migration of households and the associated outcome on children's schooling attainment. This work is relevant given the increasing migration flows both within and between countries that can have disruptive effects on the family. As such the effects of migration on the household's children has been a consistent topic within the development literature because of the various dimensions through which migration can impact them. To explore this topic, we turn to the Indonesian Family Life Survey, a longitudinal panel data maintained by the RAND Corporation. We first analyze how internal migration in general affects wage premiums, given that the migration literature finds evidence that expected wage premiums between labor markets is the principal motivation for migration. Then we look at how family migration specifically affects schooling attainment in migrant children. Our analysis is descriptive in nature but points to positive associations in both cases, with family migration reducing the hazard of exiting higher schooling levels in a country where the government is still actively combating child labor, despite its illegality. We take these two qualitative findings from the second chapter to develop in chapter three a simple intergenerational model of family migration and investment in a child's human capital. Investigating a plausible selection mechanism that plagued the endogeneity in the descriptive work allows us to not only comment on whether a causal effect exists but also on the magnitude and direction of effects. In conducting policy experiments we show that inducing family migration via full (or nearly full) subsidy, especially among low-skilled households, leads to higher average wages in the next generation than in the base case where families are tied to their home location. Finally, while relaxing the migration cost in our estimated model does lead to improvements, we also show that the cheapest policy outcome might be to relax the opportunity costs to educate that still exist in Indonesia, whose effects are greater and the costs arguably lower than a migration policy would accomplish. While a full migration subsidy may seem extreme, we note that the Indonesian government has provided impoverished Jawanese the opportunity to move themselves and their families to other islands within Indonesia at no cost through transmigration programs. We also argue that the last result doesn't diminish the effects of migration, but enhances it as the apparent disparities between labor markets is empirically favoring migration and warrants a further look at regional investments in human capital.

The growth of state authority in the societies of modern liberal democracies has resulted in a diminished scope for the exercise of individual obligations, duties and rights in private life. The decreasing sphere of individual authority may be partly explained by liberal theorists', and particularly John Locke's contention that individuals cannot provide without the coercion of the state, those public goods such as justice which distinguish the state of nature from civil society. For while man can be benevolent in private life, in public life he cannot be trusted to see beyond his own self-interest. Therefore, Locke and others concluded that public goods, which are produced by many and consumed by all, must be provided by the state. The thesis argues that benevolence or altruism is a theoretically possible if not prevalent motivation in public life. The spread of state authority manifest in the welfare state, reduces the opportunities and atrophies the willingness of individuals to behave altruistically. Moreover, different kinds of situations impose constraints upon the choice of an altruistic course of action. In a formal analysis of simple variable sum noncooperative games of the 2 x 2 order, altruism is shown to be a choice alternative in only a minority of games. But where altruism is not constrained, it is a demonstrable pressure on subjects' choices in two experiments. The subjects in the two experiments were required to choose between the two alternatives of a 2 x 2 game where decision pressures were defined over the payoff values of the matrix. The decision pressures represented in the games were benevolence, Pareto optimality, collective rationality, competition, and individual gains maximization. While the pressures of individual maximization and competition were revealed as the strongest by a multiple regression analysis, benevolence was shown to have a surprisingly strong influence upon the subjects' decisions. The finding supports the contention that individuals may be capable even in highly competitive albeit abstract situations, of sufficient benevolence to provide some of the public goods now supplied by the state. The findings therefore lend weight to the classical liberal argument for a reduced if not minimal state.
Arts, Faculty of
Political Science, Department of
Graduate

There has been a resurgence of interest in prosocial behaviour in recent years, but many authors avoid the topic of altruism due to the difficulty of discerning the motives behind the behaviour. The present thesis takes a behavioural definition of altruism (i.e. that the point of interest is the altruistic action rather than the underlying motives) and employs a paradigm from experimental economics that minimises the impact of motivating factors aside from altruism: the dictator game. Preschool children's emerging altruistic behaviour is assessed and the norms governing this behaviour are hypothesised. Chapter 1 gives an introduction to prosocial behaviour in general, before focussing on altruism and the dictator game. It demonstrates that while behaviour in older children and adults is influenced by numerous intrinsic and extrinsic factors, little is known about influences on the altruistic and dictator game behaviour of preschool children. Chapter 2 conducts a standard DG with 4-5 year-old children with particular focus on the influence of siblings. It also examines the impact of endowment size, providing a reduced endowment in order to ascertain whether children's understanding of the numerosities involved influences dictator game behaviour. There was no effect of endowment size upon DG behaviour, but sibling status was found to influence donations, with children with older siblings being more likely to donate than those without older siblings. These results are discussed in terms of models of sibling influence. Chapter 3 extends these findings by examining whether adults behave similarly to children and whether the influence of older siblings remains in adulthood. A shift in the influence of siblings was observed, with adults with siblings being more generous than those without siblings, rather than older siblings in particular being beneficial. How these findings further inform models of sibling influence is discussed. Chapter 4 examines how the source of the endowment influences preschoolers' altruistic behaviour in the dictator game by asking children to earn their endowments rather than provide them as a windfall. While previous work has shown that adults are less generous when they have earned their endowment than when it is a windfall, children showed little difference in behaviour according to the source of their endowment, although there is evidence to suggest that children with older siblings are beginning to internalise the relevant norms (otherwise there was no effect of sibling status). Chapter 5 examines the effect of framing upon children's altruistic behaviour by providing different information about the recipient (rather than no information as is standard in the DG). Children gave more to a recipient with positive characteristics than one with negative characteristics and were also influenced by the mere possession of information. Chapter 6 sums up by demonstrating how these findings interact to inform our understanding of preschoolers' altruistic behaviour and outlines areas for future research. Altogether, this thesis demonstrates that there are numerous influences on preschoolers' altruistic behaviour but children are nonetheless similarly altruistic to adults rather than more selfish, as is often assumed.

In this thesis I provide an overview of Nietzsche's ethics with an emphasis on showing how his naturalistic approach to ethics leads him to advance an egoistic moral code. I argue that this, though radical in the light of conventional morality, is not irrational, unprincipled, or proscriptive of other-regarding moral considerations. On the contrary, it demands the highest degree of foresight and integrity. While Nietzsche's writings are meant for a select group of people, namely "higher men," whose flourishing may be undercut by their unwitting acceptance of a self-destructive morality. I explain that Nietzsche places the highest degree of value on the life of these individuals, the development of their character, and their flourishing. Further, I explain that Nietzsche extols as a great virtue "bestowing" or "gift-giving," and that he takes generosity to be more frequently practiced under an ethics of egoism.

It is already recognized by some specific models in the existing literature that altruism may have socially counterproductive effects. Economic theory also shows that self- interest often produces efficient outcomes. This thesis explores the relationship between altruistic preferences, punishment systems and the cultural evolution of morality. The central argument is that altruism has detrimental effects on the efficacy of punishment and the resultant incentives of agents to co-operate with socially efficient equilibria, and that the use of punishment can have a negative effect on the evolution of altruism. The sequential punishment model is presented - akin to an infinitely-repeated stage game, but sufficiently simple to allow determinate optimal punishment paths to be derived - and the impact of different levels of altruism fully analysed. It is shown that high levels of altruistic motivation - close to but slightly less than full altruism - cause the socially efficient equilibrium to break down. Although the model is only a highly stylized representation of social interaction, the key effects that drive these results should appear in many more specific examples. In summary, these are the temptation effect (more altruistic individuals are less tempted to do harm to others), the willingness effect (more altruistic individuals are less willing to inflict punishment), and the severity effect (punishments, such as a fine where the revenue is redistributed, are less severe for more altruistic individuals, because they place a higher value on the contribution of the revenue to the welfare of others). By embedding a simplified version of the sequential punishment model in a simulated indirect evolution framework, it is also established that the use of punishment can weaken the group selection mechanism, resulting in a lower level of altruism evolving. The normative consequences of this are shown to be ambiguous.

There have been few attempts to model the behavioural microfoundations of charitable giving, particularly with regard to the choice between giving money and volunteering. An hour of a volunteer’s time is usually of a lower worth to the charity than a donation of their hourly market wage. However the aggregate levels of donations of money and time are approximately equal in value– a fact long regarded by economists as the “volunteering puzzle”. To provide a solution to this puzzle, this thesis proposes a theoretical model of pure and impure altruism and confirms its predictions with an experiment. Donors are shown to derive a “warm glow” from volunteering which is greater than the warm glow from monetary donations. The thesis also develops a novel measure to estimate the cost and scale of impure altruism. Approximately two thirds of the utility derived from charitable donations is from impure motivations, and the remaining third is pure. Consistent with this finding, the experiment shows that priming the pure motivations in donors reduces the overall provisioning of charity.

This thesis consists of two parts. The first part includes two essays that deal with the pharmaceutical market, and one essay that looks at strategic incentives that arise in optimal treatment involving untried drugs. The second part, consisting of two essays, examines some implications of altruism. Part I: Two of the essays (joint with Mats Ekelund) are empirical studies of the pharmaceutical market in Sweden. We consider all New Chemical Entities (NCEs) introduced in Sweden between 1987 and 1997. In the first essay, we examine drug pricing in the price regulated Swedish market and compare the results with a previous study of the US market, where no such regulation exists. Similar to the US study, we find that relative launch prices are positively correlated with the degree of therapeutic advance. In contrast to the US study, the presence of substitutes has a negligible effect on both launch prices and price dynamics. In the second essay, we consider the empirical relation between therapeutic advance and market shares. We use a model of horizontal and vertical product differentiation to derive a hypothesis that is tested on the NCE data. Vertically differentiated drugs on average gain larger market shares and command higher prices than horizontally differentiated drugs. Moreover, as a general rule competing substitutes have less influence on the former than on the latter. In the third essay, we develop a simple model of strategic interaction in which two agents learn about a common payoff relevant parameter. The motivating example considers two physicians who choose between two treatments, one of which has an unknown success rate. The physicians learn about the unknown treatment by prescribing it (experimenting). We contrast two information scenarios, one in which the physicians can observe the outcomes of their own treatments only, and the other in which they also can observe the outcomes from the other physician’s treatments. The pure equilibria entail an efficient amount of experimentation in both scenarios. However, strong free riding effects arise in the latter case. These are likely to cause Pareto dominated outcomes in which learning is completely thwarted. Part II: The fourth essay (joint with Jörgen W. Weibull) examines the behavior on insurance markets in a large economy when individuals have altruistic concerns for others’ welfare. The main question we address is whether strategic incentives to free ride on others’ altruism can cause insurance market failure. We also study the interaction between altruism and the adverse selection effects that arise when there is asymmetric information about the individuals’ loss probabilities. We find that if the individuals differ in their risk, and if the individual risks are observable by insurers, the degree of altruism must be (perhaps unrealistically) high in order to cause market failure. A more complex pattern is found in the case of asymmetric information: low levels of altruism increase the number of equilibria (compared to the case without altruism), while high levels of altruism cause complete market failure. The fifth essay (joint with Magnus Johannesson) also considers behavior consistentwith preferences for others’ welfare. We are concerned with how subjects allocate moneybetween themselves and others in a dictator game experiment. Deviations from the standard game theoretic prediction of the outcome in this game have been observed in numerous experiments. One possible explanation for this behavior is that individuals have altruistic concerns for others; another explanation is that individuals are motivated by reciprocity. We perform a standard double blind procedure and another design in which anonymity is guaranteed between dictators and recipients, thus removing any remaining reciprocity from the standard procedure. We could not reject the null hypothesis of no difference between the experimental groups in the two procedures. We interpret this finding as evidence of other-regarding behavior not motivated by reciprocity.
Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2001

Syftet med denna uppsats är att granska det altruistiska idealet i relation till Rousseaus och Nietzsches föreställning om den gode läraren. Att altruism är moraliskt gott är något som oftast ses som självklart. Även den allmänna förståelsen av lärarrollen präglas av sådant antagande, så till den milda grad att det blir praktiskt omöjligt att tänka sig en bra lärare som inte är altruistisk. Tidigare forskning har dock visat att det altruistiska idealet kan vara problematiskt. För att kunna övervinna detta problem använder jag Rousseaus och Nietzsches utbildningsfilosofier. Trots att de två ofta ses som varandras motsatser, synes det som att Rousseau och Nietzsche delar någon gemensam och paradoxal föreställning om den gode läraren: att denne odlar självbehärskning, och kan undervisa såsom ett exempel. Utifrån dessa perspektiv, och med hjälp av fiktiva exempel från filmer, argumenterar jag att det altruistiska idealet inte endast är ohållbart, utan även förvränger föreställningen av den gode läraren.

My diploma paper is concerned with problems of consumer's relationship to the communal waste. The aim of my work is to identify which factors influence the consumer's decision making about how to dispose of the communal waste. I focus on both economic and noneconomic incentives like social norms, altruism, motivation or information. Which role does the state play? I follow with legislative problems and different ways of waste disposal in the Czech republic with the comperison with the European Union. I focus more on recycling both the positive and negative view. In the second, practical part of my work I use the questionnaire. The results will be used for analysis of factors which influence the consumer's decision making.

There is now well established evidence that shows that growing up in poor neighbourhoods can keep people locked in poverty. One response to neighbourhood distress – i.e., situations in which neighbourhoods serves as poverty traps – is to move people out of such situations. Experiments conducted in the United States of America (for example, the Moving to Opportunity experiment) provides a compelling case for this approach. However, when the scale of neighbourhood distress reaches a majority of the population, as is does in South Africa, where the legacy of Apartheid spatial inequality persists, alternative approaches are necessary. One such alternative is to seek to better understand the behavioural mechanisms at work that tilt communities toward the low level equilibria characterising a poverty trap and to target those behaviours that can aggregate to produce neighbourhood distress. Behaviour modification programmes attempt to do this, for example, by targeting the underlying drivers of crime, violence, risky sexual behaviour and fatalism that characterises so many marginalised communities in South Africa. This dissertation uses data from a rare lab-in-the-field experiment to investigate one important mechanism of behaviour modification: the impact of emotions on pro-social preferences. The results show that positive emotions causes an increase in individual altruism and do not imply irrationality according to standard axiomatic frameworks in economics. This contrasts with the view of earlier investigators that emotions are disruptive in decision making. This dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter one focuses on a general introduction of endogenous preferences, the link between emotions, pro-social preferences and decision making. In chapter two I discuss the novel behaviour modification experiment that this dissertation is based on: the Activate! Change Driver's programme (hereafter, simply referred to as Activate!), an empowerment programme aimed at youth that live in distressed neighbourhoods in South Africa. Activate! consists of a nexus of interventions that aims to promote prosocial preferences (i.e., preferences for altruism, trust, and commitment to the public good), as well as interventions that are aimed at changing mindsets and perceptions that foster destructive risk-taking, myopia and civic apathy. The programme runs as a series of three modularised workshops covering self-belief, goal-orientation, creative thinking, problem solving, resilience, communication skills, trust building, project management, and political engagement. These interventions are theorised to lead to an actualisation of greater pro-social preferences as well as better outcomes in terms of risk taking, tolerance for delayed gratification, civic engagement, and economic opportunity. In chapter three, I investigate the causal effect of positive affect on altruism. I employed two estimation strategies where in the first strategy, I used an instrumental variable approach to estimate the effects of affect on altruism. In the second strategy, I relaxed the assumption that affect does not directly impact altruism by using a mood inducement experiment to vary affect within the subjects. Both identification strategies support the same conclusion: positive affect is shown to be a significant and positive cause of altruism. Subjects in the positive affect treatment send significantly more tokens to anonymous others in a dictator game as compared to subjects in the mild neutral affect treatment. This result is robust in all specifications considered. Chapter four focuses on characterising whether emotions disrupt rational choices in altruism. In psychology, emotions are theorised to influence decision making since they influence a person's decision to exert effort and be productive at work. There is also evidence indicating that emotions reduce time preferences over money, that they can increase cognitive flexibility, reduce spending and willingness to pay as well as increase reciprocity in gift exchange. I made use of data from a modified dictator game experiment and employed the axioms of revealed preferences to test for economic rationality. I found that subjects treated to positive affect elicited altruistic preferences that are indifferent to subjects treated to neutral affect and that their preferences fit the standard economic definition of rationality. Thus, by this account even though emotions are seen to be disruptive, they do not imply irrationality. In summary, the dissertation presents a number of implications. First, behaviour modification programmes especially in the context of marginalised communities may result in increasing pro-social outcomes and therefore have the potential to reverse fatalistic preferences among young people. Second, behaviour modification and ultimately belief updating towards pro-social preferences has the potential to spark civic mindedness among young people. Third, positive emotions mediate pro-sociality and do not blur individual rationality in decision making.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University.
Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Paul Byers. Dissertation Committee: Herve Varenne. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-162).

This doctoral thesis consists of a collection of three independent chapters. The first chapter reports the results of a laboratory experiment designed to investigate whether antisocial behaviour is driven by nastiness, defined as an intrinsic pleasure derived from lowering the well-being of others. As we shall see, people are not nasty for the sake of being nasty. Rather, people become nastier when lowering somebody’s welfare is monetarily beneficial. The second chapter explores the effects of the relative price and monetary stakes on the Dictators’ decisions in three different contexts. The data shows the experimental context matter: the effect of the monetary stakes is strong and significant on giving, but is weak and insignificant on taking. The third chapter presents an experiment designed to investigate the role of ex-post acquisition information in Sender-Receiver games. The analysis reveals that deception decreases when the Receiver can learn about the structure of the payoffs. Furthermore, a significant minority of Receivers choose to get ex post information about the payoffs.

Helpful behaviours among employees have been a central issue in the study of organizations for a long time and previous work has demonstrated their positive influence on the organizational, group, and personal effectiveness. Most of these studies have been grounded in the traditional theories assuming the principle of rational self-interest – often reducing human interactions to a process of reciprocal exchanges and calculations. However, recent changes in the nature of workplace relationships that reflect the growing mutual dependencies of employees point out to the importance of behaviours that are not predicated on any form of a “deal”. This thesis therefore directly responds to the challenges of contemporary, increasingly interdependent organizational forms and draws scholars’ attention to the concept of Organizational Altruism (OA). In broad terms, OA can be defined as benefiting a colleague as an end in itself. However, the concept is still poorly understood and its characteristics have not been dealt with in depth. Whereas the importance of OA for organizational effectiveness has been emphasised, because of the lack of a widely accepted definition, the extant evidence regarding OA is only partial and relatively inconsistent. The specific aim of this thesis is therefore to better understand the construct of OA. Three in-depth qualitative case studies with 47 dyadic interviews and 94 individuals in total provided insights ultimately enhancing our understanding of the nature of OA, the factors which influence engagement in this type of behaviour, and its consequences. Most importantly, the findings of this research allowed for an introduction of a definition of OA, a comprehensive model theorizing how OA processes unfold in organizational contexts, and a unifying theoretical framework that can act as enrichment to the field of OA. These findings have important implications for both research and practice and give rise to new areas that future research should now take account of.

I consider myself a metalsmith although my interest in materials and ideas extend beyond the boundaries of traditional practice. I approach my work thematically, meaning that I treat my discipline as a framework for a broad investigation rather than as a skill set or process. The outcomes of this approach are therefore varied and include jewelry, installation, performance, video, interactive community based projects, print and web based writing, and historical research. It is through humor or direct viewer interaction that I promote accessibility in my work. My ideas are layered and communicated in a way that allows viewers to engage on multiple levels, from superficial aesthetic appreciation of my jewelry to complex theoretical contemplation of my multi-media installations. I frequently use text, photographs, and video for their transparency and accessibility as communicative devices. In general my process favors ideation over formal aesthetics, sometimes neglecting objecthood in the pursuit of audience engagement. In my writing I employ a wry and biting style, using humor and metaphor generously. My interest in historical craft production frequently seeps into my writing. My studio practice, writing and research have a complementary relationship. My thesis work has two main components, the physical exhibition, Philanthropy Failed: The Altruist Series and the written thesis, Altruism, Activism, and the Moral Imperative in Craft. These two components are different manifestations of the same investigation into ethical production and market imperatives embedded in craft objects and interactive craft-based projects rooted in the desire for social change. Philanthropy Failed: The Altruist Series embeds the logos of prominent non-profit organizations into jewelry creating an object that, through commerce, can raise money and awareness for a charitable cause. The rejection of the project by the organizations that I sought to support highlights the cultural impotence of the individual to engage in meaningful social change activities. The exhibition documents the jewelry artifacts and their rejection by non-profit organizations, as well as three related videos; two documenting educational jewelry making performances (The Pro Bono Jeweler Series), and one chronicling the current state of ethical production within the established craft marketplace (The Moral Imperative in the Craft Marketplace). Altruism, Activism, and the Moral Imperative in Craft begins by placing the moral imperative in craft production in a historical context, and then proceeds to locate moral consumerism within the current craft marketplace. It goes on to explore activist and interactive projects rooted in craft. Additionally, it includes information about creation of the work for the physical exhibition and a brief history of my artistic development.

Organ donation is traditionally based on the notion of making a gift based on altruism. An important aspect of ‘altruistic gifting’ is commitment to a solidaristic approach to meeting transplant needs. In line with this, people are encouraged to donate their organs at death to a common pool for collective provision, or donate a live organ to another freely. Given a chronic organ shortage, proposals have been made to change this system to increase donation. Proposals include introducing some organ market or payment in the form of a reward to incentivise live or deceased donation. However, these proposals have been opposed because of the grip of ‘altruistic gift’ as the only ethically acceptable way to procure and distribute organs. To support the ethical acceptability of other systems, ‘altruistic gift’ has been subject to various criticisms. One criticism is the moral relevance of altruism: people may donate on other motives other than altruism; or, altruism is not the motive that underpins most deceased organ donations. Another criticism is the moral value of altruism: even if deceased organ donations are in general altruistic, altruism does not express communal virtues like generosity that support solidarity. A third criticism is the value of the concept of altruism when understood in the pure sense: ‘pure altruism’ fashions an unnecessary or false dichotomy – gift versus sale – in the way people can ethically relate and help each other. Consistent with or following this criticism, it has been argued that use of a financial reward to incentivise donation can be compatible with preserving donation as altruistic albeit in a ‘non-pure’ sense. ‘Altruism’ and reward can co-exist as motives for donation. This thesis concerns itself centrally with the third criticism. It argues that the concept of altruism delineates a distinctive moral ‘perspective’ of a common humanity that engenders a devotion to others’ interests. Accordingly, as I argue, ‘non-pure’ definitions of altruism are misleading as to how a financial reward can be compatible with altruism. From this, the thesis argues that introduction of a financial reward for organ donation would not preserve donation as altruistic. Based on an understanding of altruism as also a motive for ‘creative’ relationships, the thesis counters criticisms of its relevance and value to deceased organ donation under a gift model. As part of its legal analysis, the thesis considers the antithesis of ‘altruistic gift’: the idea of organs as property which places individual control on their disposition at its moral centre. It has been argued that organs should be owned as property so that individuals can sell them, or transmit them to relatives so that relatives can claim payment from donation. To provoke thought on whether organs should be owned as private property like any other, the thesis proposes an inheritance regime for organs with family as default successor.

The value of statistical life is an estimate of the monetary benefits of preventing an anonymous death. Society's willingness to pay to eliminate private health risks determines agencies' value-of-statistical-life estimates. Most estimates ignore society's willingness to pay to eliminate others' health risks. There are two possible reasons. First, altruism does not exist: Peter is not willing to pay to save Paul's life. The second possible reason is a bit more complicated. Certain economists argue that increasing benefit estimates to account for altruism involves double-counting. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate these possibilities. Accounting for altruism, it turns out, is not double-counting if altruism is paternalistic. Furthermore, I empirically demonstrate that people are willing to pay to reduce others' health risks. Thus, the two justifications for ignoring altruism are, seemingly, unfounded, which indicates that analysts should increase the value of statistical life to account for altruism.

This dissertation consists of three standalone articles that contribute to the economics literature concerning technology adoption, information diffusion, and network economics in one way or another, using a couple of primary data sources from Ethiopia. The first empirical paper identifies the main behavioral factors affecting the adoption of brand new (radical) and upgraded (incremental) bioenergy innovations in Ethiopia. The results highlight the importance of targeting different instruments to increase the adoption rate of the two types of innovations. The second and the third empirical papers of this thesis, use primary data collected from 3,693 high school students in Ethiopia, and shed light on how we should select informants to effectively and equitably disseminate new information, mainly concerning environmental issues. There are different well-recognized standard centrality measures that are used to select informants. These standard centrality measures, however, are based on the network topology---shaped only by the number of connections---and fail to incorporate the intrinsic motivations of the informants. This thesis introduces an augmented centrality measure (ACM) by modifying the eigenvector centrality measure through weighting the adjacency matrix with the altruism levels of connected nodes. The results from the two papers suggest that targeting informants based on network position and behavioral attributes ensures more effective and equitable (gender perspective) transmission of information in social networks than selecting informants on network centrality measures alone. Notably, when the information is concerned with environmental issues.

A seleção de grupo foi proposta inicialmente em um contexto ecológico como uma força seletiva agindo sobre o grupo da mesma forma que a seleção individual atua sobre os indivíduos que compõem a população. Apesar da oposição inicial dos biólogos evolucionários tradicionais, nas últimas décadas estes conceitos têm se revelado bastante úteis no estudo de problemas pouco relacionados a sua motivação original. Na primeira parte desta tese, investigamos um modelo de seleção de grupo que usa a extinção diferenciada como força seletiva atuando sobre os grupos. Neste modelo a população é composta de grupos que no jargão de seleção de grupo são denominados demes. As demes por sua vez são habitadas por indivíduos de dois tipos (altruístas não-altruístas) que podem reproduzir-se, sofrer mutação e migrar de uma deme a outra. A dinâmica da população é implementada lançando-se mão de matrizes de transição associadas a cada um destes eventos, levando a um conjunto de equações de recorrência aclopadas cuja iteração dá o estado estacionário da freqüência dos diferentes tipos de demes na população. Examinado inicialmente no regime determinístico, no qual o número de demes é infinito mas o número de indivíduos em cada demes é finito, este modelo revelou o papel desestabilizador das mutações sobre as demes totalmente altruístas. Seguido ao regime determinístico, fizemos um estudo do modelo ainda com extinção diferenciada, considerando o número de demes finito, com vistas a investigar os efeitos provocados pela finitude da população no estado estacionário da freqüência de demes na população. Observamos um aumento ainda maior da instabilidade do estado altruísta provocado pela mutação em face da diminuição da quantidade de demes presentes na população. Finalmente, investigamos um modelo para a evolução da produção de enzimas que usa a seleção de grupo característico em sua concepção. Esta modalidade de seleção de grupo baseia-se no conceito de freqüência média subjetiva, uma freqüência estimada com base na estrutura da população que neste caso também é composta por grupos. Apresentamos uma nova formulação matemática para o mesmo problema com a qual abordamos outro modelo recentemente proposto na literatura que trata da evolução de características altruístas.
Group selection was proposed initially within an ecological context as an evolutionary selective force acting on a group in the same way as the individual selection does on the individuals composing the population. Despite the initial resistance of the conservative evolutionary biologists concerning the ideas of group selection, in the last decades those concepts have been very useful in the investigation of other problems not very correlated to its original motivation. In the first part of this thesis, we investigate a group selection model based on differential extinction as a selective force. In this model, the population is divided into groups, which in the context of group selection are termed demes. The demes are inhabited by two different types of individuals, namely, altruists and non-altruists, which are capable of reproducing themselves, mutating to the other type, or migrating to another deme. The population dynamics is formulated resorting to the transition matrices associated to those events, resulting in a set of coupled recursion equations describing the time evolution of the frequencies of the different types of demes in the population. Considering first the deterministic regime, which corresponds to the limit of infinite demes, each deme containing only a finite number of individuals, this model reveals the destabilizing role of the mutation mechanism on the altruistic demes. Following that analysis, we investigate a stochastic version of the above model, in which the number of demes is finite. The focus was on the effects of the finiteness of the population in the stationary frequencies of the demes. We verified that the instability of the altruistic state due to mutations becomes even more pronounced when the number of demes is reduced. Finally, we investigate a model for the evolution of enzymes production using the concepts of trait-group selection. This kind of group selection is based on the definition of the average subjective frequency, which is estimated by considering the structure of the population. We propose a new mathematical formulation to this problem, which we then use to study a recently proposed model to describe the evolution of altruistic features.

La empatía es un elemento fundamental en la relación profesional entre sanitario y paciente, tanto a la hora de diagnosticar como en la relación de cuidado a lo largo de la enfermedad. Desde hace unos años las investigaciones se han centrado en el estudio de la empatía en la relación entre médico y paciente. Sin embargo, en los planes de estudio de las profesiones sanitarias, como Enfermería, la formación en las relaciones humanas interpersonales y el entrenamiento de éstas no tiene tanta presencia como la transmisión de conocimiento, las nuevas tecnologías, que parecen ser los ejes sobre los que gira la formación. La enseñanza de otras habilidades como son la empatía, la sensibilidad el tacto, no ocupan un lugar principal. Por tanto, es importante realizar investigaciones que permitan a las autoridades académicas, introducir las herramientas docentes necesarias para incentivar cambios que permitan desarrollar habilidades para que los profesionales tengan conductas empáticas y altruistas, que, junto a la calidad técnica, son claves para una relación sanitaria satisfactoria. Si bien, se han realizado investigaciones sobre la empatía en Enfermería, no se han encontrado trabajos sobre la empatía y el altruismo en los estudios de esta disciplina. Nuestro objetivo general es determinar el grado de cambio y de estabilidad de la empatía y el altruismo durante la adultez emergente en estudiantes de enfermería. Como específicos tenemos: 1. Estudiar los cambios en los niveles medios de empatía y altruismo en el período estudiado; 2. Estudiar si estos cambios son diferentes entre las tres disciplinas y, por tanto, si el cambio es diferencial en función de estas disciplinas; y 3. Estudiar si existe un perfil general de personalidad diferenciado para aquellos que muestran puntuaciones elevadas de empatía y altruismo comparados con aquellos que muestran puntuaciones bajas de empatía y altruismo. El diseño para esta investigación es de tipo transversal cuasiexperimental. La muestra original estaba compuesta por 516 estudiantes matriculados en el curso 2014-2015 en la Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya. Sin embargo, y en aras de controlar al máximo el efecto de la edad fuera de la adultez emergente, para asignar la variable curso solo fueron tenidos en cuenta los estudiantes que cumplieron los siguientes criterios: en primer curso, solo los estudiantes con edades entre 17 y 18 años; en segundo curso, solo los estudiantes con edades entre 18 y 19 años; en tercer curso, solo los estudiantes con edades entre 19 y 20 años; y en cuarto curso, solo los estudiantes con edades entre 20 y 21 años. Así, el número de estudiantes por cada grado es el siguiente: 109 estudiantes de los estudios de grado de enfermería, 60 del de Educación Infantil y 27 del de Empresa, distribuidos por estudios y curso según la Tabla número 7. Los instrumentos utilizados en esta investigación son el cuestionario de personalidad HEXACO-PI-R, la adaptación del Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) al español y la escala de altruismo SRA. En cada uno de los cuatro cursos de Enfermería, Educación Infantil y Empresa se ex plicó la finalidad de la investigación y se solicitó el preceptivo consentimiento informado. El cuadernillo con los tres cuestionarios se pasó de forma colectiva en grupos de 50 estudiantes como máximo, siendo recogidos al terminar la prueba. Los resultados han mostrado que los niveles medios de empatía muestran una tendencia creciente desde el primer curso al cuarto, en todas las disciplinas (Enfermería, Educación y Empresa). Por lo que respecta a los niveles de altruismo se incrementan en Enfermería y Educación, mientras que disminuye en Empresa. Estos resultados muestran que hay una relación entre empatía y altruismo. En cuanto a la evolución según el tipo de disciplina, hay una tendencia diferencial en Empresa, en que el altruismo disminuye, frente a Enfermería y Educación que aumenta. En relación con la existencia de un perfil de personalidad empática, destacan los factores Honestidad-Humildad, Cordialidad, Apertura y Emocionalidad en el desarrollo de la empatía. En la parte cognitiva están implicados los factores Honestidad, Cordialidad y Apertura, mientras que en la emocional el factor Emocionalidad aparece implicado de forma significativa en Malestar Personal y en Preocupación Empática junto a Honestidad-Humildad. Estos resultados están en consonancia con trabajos anteriores (Ashton, 2014; Romero, E.; Villar, P. y López-Romero, 2015). Con respecto a los factores implicados en altruismo, los resultados muestran una fuerte relación en Honestidad-Humildad, Cordialidad y Emocionalidad, estarían representados, en la faceta intersticial de altruismo en el HEXACO. Estos hallazgos son consistentes con anteriores investigaciones (Ashton et al., 2014). Finalmente, los resultados de nuestro trabajo, en concordancia con otros estudios (Robins et al., 2001; Specht et al., 2011), muestran los cambios que se producen a lo largo de los estudios universitarios y cómo en la adultez emergente, período estudiado por nuestra tesis, se dan cambios sustanciales en la personalidad, aunque no dramáticos. Estos resultados pueden proporcionar una ayuda para estudiar la introducción de métodos que permitan mejorar los niveles de empatía y altruismo en los estudiantes de Enfermería.
Empathy is a fundamental element in the relationship between health professionals and patients, both at the time of diagnosis and in the relationship of care throughout the illness. For some years now, research has focused on the study of empathy in the doctor-patient relationship. However, in the curricula of health professions such as Nursing, formation and training in interpersonal human relations do not have as much presence as the focus on the transmission of knowledge and on new technologies, which seem to be the axes on which training revolves. The teaching of other skills such as empathy, sensitivity and tact do not have a primary place in the curricula. Therefore, it is important to carry out research that allows academic authorities to introduce necessary teaching tools to encourage changes that allow professionals to develop skills so that they can have empathic and altruistic behaviours, which together with technical quality are key to a satisfactory health relationship. Although research has been done on empathy in Nursing, no work on empathy and altruism has been found in the syllabi of this discipline. Our overall goal is to determine the degree of change and stability of empathy and altruism during emerging adulthood in Nursing students. More specifically, we aim 1: To study the changes in the average levels of empathy and altruism in the period studied. 2: To study if these changes are different between the three disciplines studied (Nursing, Child Education and Business) and therefore if the change is different depending on these disciplines. 3: To study whether there is a different general personality profile for those who show high empathy and altruism scores compared to those who show low empathy and altruism scores. The design for this research is cross-sectional, quasi-experimental. The original sample was made up of 516 students enrolled in the 2014/2015 academic year at the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia. However, in order to control as much as possible the effect of age outside of emerging adulthood, only students who met the following criteria were considered in assigning the course variable: in the first course only, students aged 17 to 18 were taken into account; in the second course, only students aged 18 to 19; in the third course, only students aged 19 to 20; and in fourth course, only students aged 20 to 21. Thus, the number of students per degree is as follows: 109 students from the Nursing degree, 60 from Child Education and 27 from Business, distributed by degrees and course as can be seen in table number 7. The instruments used in this research are the HEXACO-PI-R personality questionnaire, the adaptation of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to Spanish and the SRA altruism scale. In each of the four courses of Nursing, Child Education and Business degrees, the purpose of the research was explained, and the compulsory consent was requested. The booklet with the three questionnaires was assigned collectively, being collected as each participant finished the test, in groups of up to 50 students. The results have revealed that the average levels of empathy show an increasing trend from the first to the fourth year, in all disciplines, i.e. Nursing, Child Education and Business. As for the levels of altruism, they increase in Nursing and Child Education, while they decrease in Business. These results show that there is a relationship between empathy and altruism. As for the evolution according to the type of study, there is a differential tendency in the Business degree, in which altruism decreases, as op- posed to Nursing and Child Education, in which it increases. In relation to the existence of an empathetic personality profile, the factors Honesty-Humility, Cordiality, Openness and Emotionality stand out in the development of empathy. In the cognitive part, the factors Honesty, Cordiality and Openness are involved, while in the emotional part, the Emotionality factor is significantly involved in Personal Discomfort and in Empathic Concern, together with Honesty-Humility. These results are in line with previous work (Ashton 2014; Romero, E., Villar, P., López-Romero, 2015). Regarding the factors involved in altruism, the results show a strong relationship in Honesty-Humility, Cordiality and Emotionality, which would be represented in the interstitial facet of altruism in the HEXACO questionnaire. These findings are consistent with previous research (Ashton et al., 2014). Finally, the results of our research show, in accordance with other studies (Robins et al., 2001; Specht et al., 2011), the changes that occur throughout university studies, and how in emerging adulthood, the period studied in our thesis, there are substantial, though not dramatic, changes in personality. These results can provide an aid to study the introduction of methods to improve levels of empathy and altruism in Nursing students.

This thesis inquires into how human language relates to morality – and shows the ways language enables, extends, and maintains human value systems. Though we ultimately need to view the relation between language and morality from many different perspectives – biological, psychological, sociological, and philosophical – the approach here is primarily a linguistic one informed by evolutionary theory. At first, this study shows how natural selection relates to the problem of altruism and how language serves human moral ontogeny. Subsequently, the argument demonstrates how language helps enable cultural group selection. Moreover, as language helps influence human behaviour in an altruistic direction beyond in-group non-kin (helping facilitate cultural group selection), we also consider how language can help facilitate altruistic behaviour towards out-group non-kin. This therefore raises the prospect of a limited moral realism in a world of evolutionary processes. With these issues and possibilities in mind, we consider and analyze the properties of language that help extend human morality. Specifically, discussion covers how recursion, linguistic creativity, naming ability, displacement, stimulus freedom, compositionality, cultural transmission, and categorization extend moral systems. Moreover, because language so broadly influences morality, the inquiry extends into how linguistic differences (specifically between English and Japanese) might also cause subtle differences in moral perception between Japanese and English speakers. Lastly, we consider how moral ideas might take on a life of their own, catalytically propagating in degrees dependent and independent of human intention.

Humans are remarkable for the level of altruistic and prosocial behaviour they display. This has been an enduring puzzle to social scientists who have proposed a range of theories to try to account for human's propensity to act altruistically. This thesis adds to this tradition by exploring a new altruistic preference, known as, reluctant altruism. Reluctant altruists are those who do not trust others to help and display a positive response to high free riding contexts. Chapter one reviews the main influential theories that seek to explain altruistic behaviour and introduces the theory of reluctant altruism. Chapters two to five empirically tests core characteristics of reluctant altruism within a university population. Chapter two attempts to identify whether reluctant altruists choose to support the least supported charity and if observable contexts enhance reluctant altruist's prosocial behaviour. Chapter two shows a clear preference for the least supported charity which is not explained by reluctant altruism or levels of observability. Chapter three tests whether reluctant altruism predicts less trusting helping behaviour in a modified trust game and identifies if reluctant altruists donate more under observable conditions with a larger sample than chapter two. The results show a clear preference for the least supported charity but find no evidence for reluctant altruists displaying less trusting helping behaviour or reluctant altruists donating more in observable contexts. Chapter four tests if reluctant altruists make charitable donations to causes suffering from varying levels of free riding. The findings again show a preference for donating to the least supported charity and displays mixed evidence for reluctant altruist's donating under high levels of free riding. Chapter five explores reluctant altruist's emotional responses pre and post charitable donations. The results indicate that reluctant altruists are more negative pre-donation and do not become happier post donation as might be expected by Negative State Relief theory. Chapter 6, utilises the underdog preference which is a preference to support those at a relative disadvantage to explain the consistent finding over chapters two to four that the least supported charity receives more donations. Chapter seven presents a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect the observability has on prosocial behaviour. The main finding is the observability has a small positive effect on prosocial behaviour. Finally, in the discussion, I review the mixed findings surrounding reluctant altruism and suggest future avenues of research that might help further clarify reluctant altruism.

This thesis examines the significance of sociobiology within Wesleyan ethics. In addition to investigating how sociobiological altruism connects to Wesleyan holiness, it argues that John Wesley capitalized on the biological and environmental constraints on human action, creating a particular setting that nurtured altruism in his followers through the cultivation of holiness. Of the main chapters, Chapter 2 helps the reader understand basic and current sociobiological explanations of altruistic behavior—a behavior that has been a stumbling block for evolutionary theorists who have attempted, unsuccessfully, to explain why or how it exists. To address the presence of altruism among humans, this chapter elucidates kin selection theory, group selection theory (also called multilevel selection theory), and game theory, seeking to provide clarification of current research within the field of sociobiology. Chapter 3 offers a critique of the sociobiological explanations of altruism and examines the inability of sociobiology to adequately explain altruism while providing evidence for the reductionist tendencies of prominent sociobiologists such as E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins. Chapter 4 introduces how the biological and environmental constraints on human behavior influence where individuals are located on the selfish/selfless spectrum. Although all humans are influenced by some internal and external constraints, they still have the unique capacity to freely move on that continuum. This chapter paves the way for a discussion of John Wesley’s environmental constraints. Chapter 5, then, focuses on Wesley and the connection between the sociobiological understanding of altruism in regards to his theological understanding of both original sin and Christian perfection. In order to fully account for Wesley’s unique bands and classes (those groups that provided a system through which Wesley encouraged altruism by way of social holiness), it is necessary to work through his underlying theological presuppositions. To this end, the last major chapter, Chapter 6, further unpacks John Wesley’s ideas, illustrating how his understanding of holiness and Christian perfection led him to develop a complete system of checks and balances—which this thesis calls his “world of constraints”—that created an environment whereby individuals were much more likely to move toward the altruistic side of the selfish/selfless spectrum. Therefore, this thesis argues that, within a community concerned with Christian perfection, an individual can develop a virtuous character that encourages the overcoming of genetic constraints.

Cooperation in joint enterprises poses a social dilemma. How can altruistic behavior be sustained if selfish alternatives provide a higher payoff? This social dilemma can be overcome by the threat of sanctions. But a sanctioning system is itself a public good and poses a second-order social dilemma. In this paper, we show by means of deterministic and stochastic evolutionary game theory that imitation-driven evolution can lead to the emergence of cooperation based on punishment, provided the participation in the joint enterprise is not compulsory. This surprising result - cooperation can be enforced if participation is voluntary - holds even in the case of 'strong altruism', when the benefits of a player's contribution are reaped by the other participants only. (authors' abstract)

Ce travail de thèse a pour objectif d’étudier l’impact de l’introduction de la taxation des héritages sur la croissance et l’offre de travail, en considérant la diversité des transferts familiaux intergénérationnels. En effet, la transmission familiale peut être éducative, culturelle, patrimoniale, ou encore perçue comme un transfert en temps. Toutes ces formes de solidarités familiales génèrent des externalités, qui impactent différemment la croissance et l’offre de travail, ce qui peut affecter l’efficacité des politiques fiscales. Ainsi, l’impôt successoral réduit l’incitation à épargner mais peut accroître l’investissement éducatif ou les transferts en temps, ce qui peut affecter positivement la productivité des ménages et l’offre de travail. Nous développons ici des modèles théoriques à générations imbriquées avec altruisme envers les descendants. La thèse est composée de trois chapitres. Le premier chapitre permet d'étudier l’impact de la non-disponibilité de la dette publique sur la politique de redistribution intergénérationnelle mise en place par le gouvernement, en utilisant uniquement l'impôt sur les revenus du travail et l'impôt successoral. Il permet aussi d’analyser son effet sur la croissance économique et les transferts familiaux intergénérationnels, consistant en des legs et des dépenses d’éducation, en mettant en évidence le rôle central de la taxation de l’héritage. Le second chapitre propose un modèle avec legs et transferts de temps descendants, dont l’objectif est de montrer les différences entre la taxation de l’héritage et la taxation du capital de cycle de vie, sur le comportement des ménages. Nous montrons que l’utilisation de la taxation de l’héritage à la place de celle du capital peut être une reforme Pareto-améliorante, en fonction de l’effet de la réforme sur l’offre de travail. Enfin, le troisième chapitre s’intéresse aussi à la comparaison entre taxation du capital et taxation de l’héritage, dans un modèle où les dynasties sont différentes en termes de productivité et de niveau d'altruisme. Ce chapitre démontre qu’appliquer l'impôt successoral à la place de celui du capital, peut améliorer à long terme, le bien-être des moins altruistes et, dans certains cas, peut être Pareto-améliorante, si les ressources disponibles pour les plus altruistes augmentent avec la réforme
This thesis analyzes the impact of inheritance taxation on growth and labor supply, considering the diversity of intergenerational family transfers, such that bequests, parent's education spendings or time transfers. These forms of family solidarity generate externalities, which impact growth and labor supply, and affect the effectiveness of tax policies. Concerning inheritance tax which reduces the incentive to save, it can also increase educational investment or time transfers, which can positively affect household productivity and labor supply. For this purpose, we use overlapping generations models with altruism towards offspring. The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter studies the impact of public debt on intergenerational transfers and on human capital growth, using a simple tax structure with labor and bequest taxes. In this model, parents augment their children's income through education and bequest. When public debt is not available, we show that the long run growth is higher thanks to an increase of the gap between the two taxes, which underlines the role of inheritance taxation. The second chapter proposes a model with rational altruism textit{`a la} Barro, where time transfers and bequests are available to parents. We analyze a shift from capital income tax towards inheritance tax, leaving constant the capital labor ratio. We show that this reform may increase welfare of all generations. Welfare improvement mainly depends on the effect of the reform on the labor supply. This tax reform is also implemented in the third chapter where we consider that dynasties differ in productivity and altruism. We show that the tax reform increases the welfare of less altruistic dynasties but decreases welfare of the most altruistic one. Extending the model with time transfers and elastic labor supply, we identify situations where the tax reform is Pareto improving

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2010.
Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 15, 2010). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Altruism is loosely defined as a desire to help others as well as acts and behaviors towards that end, particularly when no expectation of personal gain or reward exists (Batson, Fultz, Schoenrade & Paduano, 1987). It seems likely that individuals who choose to pursue acareer in counseling might be doing so out of some altruistic interest; in other words a desire to come to the aid of others in distress. It has been noted as well that some individuals may enter the counseling profession based more on self-interest; for example, as "wounded healers" hoping to work on personal issues (Wheeler, 2002). Some researchers (Shapiro &Gabbard, 1996) hypothesize that overstated altruism may lead to burn-out and fatigue among some counselors whereas those who have limited altruism may have difficulties empathizing with clients. Despite the apparent relevance of altruism to counseling as a profession, very few studies have investigated the level of altruism among those in the field. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between altruism and personality variables in beginning counseling students. It is currently unclear to what extent altruism is a state (situational) vs. a trait (inherent). Grasping a greater sense of what constitutes altruistic behavior among beginning counseling students may benefit researchers in understanding the potential difficulties Shapiro & Gabbard (1996) suggest; i.e., burn-out, limited empathy or even self-gratification. The population in this study was 87 students entering a Master's degree in Counselor Education at a large, public institution in the Southeastern Unites States. The subjects completed the following assessments at orientation to their program: The Robinson-Heintzelman Inventory (an instrument designed to study altruism vs. self-interest in counselor education students), the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior (FIRO-B). It was hypothesized that higher scores on altruism would correlate with the intuitive and feeling dimensions of the MBTI and low scores on wanted inclusion, wanted affection and expressed control on the FIRO-B. The hypotheses were not supported in this study; the only finding of statistical significance was the correlation between the thinking dimension of the MBTI and the total score on the RHI. Suggestions for future research are discussed.
Ph.D.
Department of Child, Family and Community Sciences
Education
Counselor Education

Genom en, i jämförelse med tidigare studier, omfattande enkätstudie som innefattar både gymnasieelever och universitetsstudenter undersöker vi individers benägenhet att agera utifrån egenintresse och dess korrelation med studieinriktning. Enkätundersökningen baseras på variationer av två olika spelteoretiska scenarier som ämnar visa om beteendemönster skiljer sig åt mellan olika studieinriktningar. Vi finner att nationalekonomistudenter och ekonomistudenter generellt agerar mer utifrån egenintresse, och är mer sannolika att agera egoistiskt och rationellt, än andra individer. Vi kan dock inte visa om det beror på att ekonomer redan innan utbildningen särskiljer sig från andra individer eller om utbildningen i sig påverkar studenternas agerande.

Altruism and cooperation have been troubling concepts for theorists. Where altruism towards kin is well-researched, altruism towards non-kin is an evolutionary puzzle. There have been advances in evolutionary psychology where theorists have explored the evolution of altruism through the lens of sexual selection theory, hypothesising that altruism leads to increased chances of being chosen as a mate, particularly as females value altruistic tendencies in a romantic partner. As a result, it was hypothesised males would be more cooperative and altruistic towards those they were attracted to. In study 1, it was found that females placed more importance on altruism and cooperativeness in a mate, far more than males. In addition, males placed more importance on physical attractiveness in a mate, far more than females. In study 2, it was found that people were altruistic and cooperative towards attractive members of the opposite sex when viewing images in response to moral scenarios. When I aimed to replicate this finding, using a game-theoretic framework in studies 3, 4 and 5, I found that people were fair, and altruistic when allocating stakes, and attractiveness did not predict altruism. This consistent fair behaviour led me to further investigate the role of fairness in mate attraction. In studies 6 and 7, it was found that third-parties found fairness to be more attractive than altruism, particularly female participants. In study 8, I further delved into the role of fairness in mate choice, where I found that fairness could be attractive because it increases relationship maintenance in the short-term, but it is altruism that increases relationship longevity in long-term relationships. Furthermore, it was found that people perceive short-term, fair couples to have less intention to cheat than long-term altruistic couples. This thesis opens a new and exciting door in the field of evolutionary psychology, providing evidence that fairness could play a role in mate choice.

This thesis examines debates regarding whether women should donate oöcytes for research in Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) or be paid. Payment is expected to increase the number of providers by providing an impersonal rather than personal incentive: cheaper fertility treatment or interest in the therapeutic benefits of SCNT research for a friend or family member. The contemplation of a payment system marks a shift from Titmuss’s model of altruistic donation. However, in both models the provider is disinterested in some way: by giving in the spirit of the public rather than private sphere. To shed light on these issues, I analyse empirical data collected with qualitative methods. I report findings that indicate providing oöcytes for SCNT research is unappealing for two reasons: first, ‘good eggs’ are essential to achieve one’s maternal aspirations; second the process of oöcyte extraction is perceived as requiring an extraordinary amount of physical and emotional discipline. Yet the results indicate that these issues are mitigated when oöcyte provision occurs for a personal incentive. This affective framework—the identification of a specific benefit or beneficiary—can change perceptions of effort, risk and reward. A woman may be transformed into a ‘good egg’ – a donor providing social benefit – if there are concrete, rather than abstract, dimensions to the process of scientific research. Hence, these findings indicate that connections between femininity and altruism are flexible. I also argue that the advocates of a payment model recall the figure of the citizen who ‘should’ be motivated by the spirit of the public sphere. However, for the participants in this study, payment represents an inappropriate motivation. I show that contributions to science are interested and occur in relationship between an individual, the tissue and the collective the research claims to benefit.