We study empirically whether there is scope for parents to shape the economic preferences and attitudes of their children through purposeful investments. We exploit information on the risk and trust attitudes of parents and their children, as well as rich information about parental efforts in...

In this paper we estimate the labor supply function for married females in Estonia. Particularly, we are interested in determining the elasticities of the weekly supply ofhours with respect to hourly wage rates and with respect to nonlabor income. We adopt the two-step estimation procedure. In...

We hypothesize that an individual's time use choices are contingent on the time use choices of others because the utility derived from leisure time often benefits from the presence of companionable others inside and outside the household. We develop a model of time use, and demonstrate that its...

We estimate the causal relationship between family size and labour market outcomes for families in low fertility and low female employment regime. Family size is instrumented using twinning and gender composition of the first two children. Among families with at least one child we identify the...

We examine the effect of commuting on labour supply patterns. A labour supply model is introduced which shows that commuting distance increases daily workhours, whereas the effect on total labour supply is ambiguous. This paper addresses these issues empirically using the socio-economic panel...

In 1999, in Germany, the statutory sick pay level was increased from 80 to 100 percent of foregone earnings for sicknessepisodes of up to six weeks. We show that this reform has led to an increase in average absence days of about 10 percent or one additional day per employee, per year. The...

This paper examines to what extent non-random sorting of spouses affects earnings inequality while explicitly disentangling effects from increasing assortativeness in couple formation from changing patterns of couples' labor supply behavior. Using German micro data, earnings distributions of...

Generous income support programs as provided by European welfare states have often been blamed to hamper employment. This paper investigates the importance of incentives inherent in the tax-benefit system for the individual decision to take up work. Using German microdata over the period 1993 -...

We decompose permanent earnings risk into contributions from hours and wage shocks. To distinguish between hours shocks, modeled as innovations to the marginal disutility of work, and labor supply reactions to wage shocks we formulate a life-cycle model of consumption and labor supply. Both...

The paper extends a static discrete-choice labor supply model by adding participation and hours constraints. We identify restrictions by survey information on the eligibility and search activities of individuals as well as actual and desired hours. This provides for a more robust identification...