Parenting with Patience: Parental Incentives and Child Development

S-Tier
Journal: Journal of Political Economy
Year: 2026
Volume: 134
Issue: 1
Pages: 210 - 284

Authors (4)

Daniela Del Boca (Università degli Studi di Tori...) Christopher Flinn (not in RePEc) Ewout Verriest (not in RePEc) Matthew Wiswall (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

2.018 = (α=2.02 / 4 authors) × 4.0x S-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We construct a dynamic model of child development where forward-looking parents and children jointly take actions to increase the child’s cognitive and noncognitive skills within a Markov perfect equilibrium framework. In addition to time and money investments in their child, parents also choose whether to use explicit incentives to increase the child’s self-investment, which may reduce the child’s future intrinsic motivation to invest by reducing the child’s discount factor. We use the estimated model parameters to show that the use of extrinsic motivation has large costs in terms of the child’s future incentives to invest in themselves.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/738481
Journal Field
General
Author Count
4
Added to Database
2026-01-25