In a simple conceptual framework, we organize a multitude of phenomena related to the (mis)prediction of utility. Consequences in terms of distorted choices and lower wellbeing emerge if people have to trade-off between alternatives that are characterized by attributes satisfying extrinsic...

Existing studies show that individuals who retire replace some private consumption by home production, but do not consider joint behaviour of couples. Here we analyze the causal effect of retirement of each partner on hours of home production of both partners in a couple. Our identification...

The time devoted to housework in couple households is substantial. Research on intrahousehold time allocations has generally assumed that housework is a necessary evil and that the partner with the lower opportunity cost of time in the market will devote more time to home production. In reality,...

The Mirrlees Review of the UK tax system, together with its companion volume of research papers, can be expected to influence future discussions of tax reform. Indeed, this can already be recognised in the Henry Review. As far as income taxation is concerned, the most substantive recommendation...

This paper studies how an institution such as markets affects the evolution of mankind. My key point is that the forces of natural selection are made weaker because trade allows people to specialize in those activities where they are strong, and to offset their weaknesses by purchasing adequate...

Although the number of immigrant households in the Netherlands is substantial, the labor supply choices of this group are usually neglected in empirical studies because these households are usually under-sampled. We use a stratified sample of Turkish, Surinamese/Antillean and Dutch households...

In this paper we compare gender differences in the allocation of time to market work, domestic work, child care, and leisure over the life cycle. Time use profiles for these activity categories are constructed on survey data for three countries: Australia, the UK and Germany. We discuss the...

In this paper an empirical model is developed where the collective household model is used as a basic framework to describe the time allocation problem. The collective model views household behavior as the outcome of maximizing a household utility function which is a weighted sum of the utility...

Using detailed time use data for Germany a positive correlation is found between the level of schooling education and time investments in informal education. Two hypotheses explain this observation: (1) highly educated people have higher opportunity costs of their leisure time and thus prefer...