It is unlikely that husbands and wives always agree on exactly what public goods to buy. Nor do they necessarily agree on how many hours to work with obvious consequences for the household budget. We therefore model consumption and labor supply behavior of a couple in a non-cooperative setting...

It is unlikely that husbands and wives always agree on exactly what public goods to buy. Nor do they necessarily agree on how many hours to work with obvious consequences for the household budget. We therefore model consumption and labor supply behavior of a couple in a non-cooperative setting...

In the tradition of Afriat (1967), Diewert (1973) and Varian (1982), we provide a revealed preference characterisation of the representative consumer. Our results are simple and complement those of Gorman (1953, 1961), Samuelson (1956) and others. They can also be applied to data very readily...

We propose a method to identify bounds (i.e. set identification) on the sharing rule for a general collective household consumption model. Unlike the effects of distribution factors, it is well known that the level of the sharing rule cannot be uniquely identified without strong assumptions on...

We develop a novel framework to analyze the structural implications of the marriage market for household consumption patterns. We start by defining a revealed preference characterization of efficient household consumption when the marriage is stable. In particular, stability means that the...

We study the labor supply dynamics of elderly couples by means of a structural collective model. The model allows for general externalities with respect to spouses? leisure. Preferences and the intrahousehold bargaining process are identified by using panel data with couples and individuals who...

We compare the empirical performance of unitary and collective labor supply models, using representative data from the Dutch DNB Household Survey. We conduct a nonparametric analysis that avoids the distortive impact of an erroneously specified functional form for the preferences and/or the...

Flexible work schedules and telecommuting may help to improve the combination of work and family. An open question is whether job flexibility can increase the well-being of the children, which depends on parental time spent on childcare. We propose a rich collective model describing the...

We propose a novel structural method to empirically identify economies of scale in household consumption. We assume collective households with consumption technologies that define the public and private nature of expenditures through Barten scales. Our method recovers the technology by solely...

Do individuals divorce for economic reasons? Can we measure the attractiveness of new matches in the marriage market? We answer these questions using a structural model of the household and a rich panel dataset from Malawi. We propose a model of the household with consumption, production and...