Female labor supply and its determinants: Evidence for Colombia through estimates of synthetic cohorts

The elasticity of labor supply to real wages has broad and significant implications to understanding economic fluctuations and to evaluating the effects of economic policies. Recent literature emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between uncompensated and intertemporal elasticities, controlling for the endogeneity of wages. We use a pseudo-panel of female labor hours and real wages to measure the elastiticities of labor supply to real wages. We find that life cycle theory is supported, with partially concave labor hours that are parallel to the concavity of wages. In addition, the intertemporal and uncompensated elasticities of labor supply to wages are positive but small in magnitude