Conflict Within Economic Dynasties: Selfishness vs Descending Altruism

The paper studies voluntary wealth transfers across generations. It assumes heterogeneous agents: altruistic agents leave a bequest to their children, whereas selfish ones do not. The possibility for the parent to distinguish altruist and selfish children or not is discussed in conjunction with the type of preferences of the agent, especially his/her aversion for inequality in consumption among his/her children. In this discrimination case, the authors show that bequests are not affected by preferences: the agent is able to adopt the bequest so as to equalize consumption across children.