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Economics Seminar

Authors:

• Masao Ogaki
  Keio University

• Kohei Kubota
  Nihon University

• Charles Yuji Horioka
  Osaka University

• Akiko Kamesaka
  Aoyama Gakuin University

• Fumio Ohtake
  Osaka University

Paper 1: "Cultures, Worldviews, and Intergenerational Altruism" This paper presents empirical evidence concerning effects of cultural differences on parents' attitudes toward children from unique U.S. and Japanese survey data. These data sets have been collected by Osaka University, and contain questions concerning worldviews and religions, hypothetical questions about parental behavior, and questions about socioeconomic variables. The data show that U.S. parents tend to be tougher than Japanese parents toward young children. Our evidence suggests that contents of worldview beliefs held by parents affect parents' attitudes toward children. Our empirical evidence also indicates that people who are confident about issues related to worldviews tend to show tough attitudes toward their children. Because U.S. parents are much more confident than Japanese parents in worldview issues on the average, this cultural difference helps explain a substantial portion of the difference in parental attitudes between U.S. and Japanese parents. Paper 2: "Time Discounting and Intergenerational Altruism" This paper presents empirical evidence concerning time discounting and intergenerational altruism from unique U.S. and Japanese survey data. These data sets have been collected by Osaka University, and contain hypothetical questions about parental behavior and time discounting as well as socioeconomic variables. Our main finding is that parents' attitude depends on the magnitude of their time discount factor regarding their financial decisions. The empirical results are interpreted in terms of the tough love model of intergenerational altruism, and is consistent with the model.