Two-sided Altruism and Signaling

This paper shows that when donors and recipients care about each other --two-sided altruism -- the presence of asymmetry of information about the donor's income leads very naturally to a signaling game. A donor who cares about the recipient's welfare has incentives to appear richer than he is when the recipient cares about him. Similarly, asymmetry of information regarding the donor's income generates a signaling game in the presence of two-sided altruism. These signaling games put upward pressure on transfers and this pressure increases with the altruism of the recipient.