Until recently, most economists viewed the household as a collection of individuals who behave as if in agreement on how best to combine time and goods (purchased or produced at home) to produce commodities that maximize some common welfare index. This model has been extended far beyond standard...

The policy failures associated with inappropriate acceptance of unitary models of household behavior are more serious than those associated with inappropriate acceptance of collective models, contend the authors. They support this claim with illustrations. Consider, for example, the effect of...

This paper uses a noncooperative bargaining model to motivate an empirical analysis of the determinants of household expenditures. Drawing on a national household survey from the Cote d'Ivoire, the authors find that raising women's share of cash income increases the budget share of food and...