Endogenous Altruism: Theory and Evidence from Chinese Twins
研究了兄弟姐妹间利他行为的形成机制，发现父母会通过育儿实践促进子女间的利他情感，且当子女先天禀赋差异较大时，这种实践更密集，导致禀赋较好的孩子获得更多人力资本投资。
This paper studies the endogenous formation of intersibling altruism. The theory suggests that parental incentive to foster children’s fraternal love is positively related to efficiency gains from more human capital investment in the more gifted child. The empirical analyses explore the plausibly exogenous within-twin difference in birth weight, a proxy for prenatal endowment. Consistent with the theory, the estimation results show that a larger difference in children’s birth weight leads to more intensive parenting practice to foster children’s fraternal love and that when such practice is more intensive, the heavier child obtains more investment relative to the other child.