The allocation of time and goods in household activities: A test of separability

In this paper, we test for the weak separability hypothesis imposed by the household production model between goods and time inputs used in the production of different commodities. Our data come from a French survey which reports both expenditures and time that households devote to some activities. The results allow us to show that the weak separability assumption cannot be rejected only when households are strongly time constrained. In the opposite case, home time uses are found to be nonseparable.