This paper shows that “wasteful” litigation about intellectual property may be welfare enhancing. The aim of an intellectual property protection system is to solve the trade-off between exante innovation incentive and ex-post monopoly welfare loss. The litigation about intellectual property...

Empirical research has consistently shown that, on average, men are paid higher wages than women. At the same time, men enjoy more leisure time than women. We develop a model of private provision of family public goods to analyze whether the wage gap and the leisure gap are related. Within a...

A distinguishing feature among households is whether adult members work or not, since the occupational status of adults affects their available time for home activities. Using a survey method in two countries, Belgium and Germany, we provide household incomes that retain the level of well-being...

Different family types may have a fixed flow of consumption costs, related to subsistence needs. We use a survey method in order to identify and estimate such a fixed component of spending for different families. Our method involves making direct questions about the linkup between aggregate...

A distinguishing feature among households is whether adult members work or not, since the employment status a?ects a household’s available time for home activities. Using a survey method in two countries, Belgium and Germany, we provide household incomes that retain the level of well-being...

Recent studies in high-income industrialized countries have shown that equivalence scales are income-dependent. We investigate whether this dependence also holds in poorer, services oriented countries, by considering the example of Cyprus. We also examine whether household economies of scale and...