TY  - JOUR
AU  - Abel,Andrew B.
AU  - Warshawsky,Mark
TI  - Specification of the Joy of Giving:  Insights from Altruism
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 2154
PY  - 1987
Y2  - 1987
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2154
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2154.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Andrew B. Abel
Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
2315 Steinberg Hall - Dietrich Hall
Philadelphia, PA  19104-6367
Tel: 215/898-4801
Fax: 215/573-7244
E-Mail: abel@wharton.upenn.edu

Mark Warshawsky
Towers Watson
E-Mail: mark.warshawsky@watsonwyatt.com
AB  - This paper analyzes the joy of giving bequest motive in which the utility obtained from leaving a bequest depends only on the size of the bequest. It exploits the fact that this formulation can be interpreted as a reduced form of an altruistic bequest motive to derive a relation between the value of the altruism parameter and the value of the joy of giving parameter. Using previous discussions of an a priori range of plausible values for the altruism parameter we then derive plausible restrictions on the joy of giving parameter. We demonstrate that this parameter may well be orders of magnitude larger than assumed in the existing literature.
ER  -