The authors provide a framework within which the child-support compliance decisions of noncustodial fathers and the child-support awards set by institutional agents can be coherently interpreted. The model of child-support transfers is able to capture qualitatively the features of the monthly...

In this paper, we examine whether imperfections in credit markets spill over to other markets, particularly the labor market. We take the case of Italy, a country that experienced changes in the mortgage market brought about by the 1992 European unification and other institutional shifts. These...

In this paper, we explore the impact of social policies and labour market characteristics on women’s decisions regarding work and childbearing, using data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). We estimate the two decisions jointly and, in addition to personal characteristics,...

Economic models of household behavior typically yield the prediction that increases in schooling levels and wage rates of married women lead to increases in their labor supply and reductions in fertility. In Italy, as well as in other Southern European countries, low labor market participation...

In spite of relatively generous public subsidies and a reputation for high quality, only a very limited proportion of Italian families use public child care. In this paper we explore the significance of various factors on the choices made between different types of child care. In part one, we...

Italy is a country with a long history of emigration and a very short experience of immigration. The paper first surveys the Italian emigration pattern describing the characteristics of the Italian emigrants (age, sex, skill level), their area of origins and the directions of their movement. The...

In this paper, we explore the impact of social policies and labour market characteristics on womens decisions regarding work and childbearing, using data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). We estimate the two decisions jointly and, in addition to personal characteristics, we...

Most econometric models of intrahousehold behavior assume that household decision-making is efficient, i.e., utility realizations lie on the Pareto frontier. In this paper we investigate this claim by adding a number of participation constraints to the household allocation problem. Short-run...

In this paper, we formulate a dynamic utility maximization model of female labor force participation and fertility choices and estimate approximate decision rules using data on married women in Italy, Spain and France. The estimated decision rules indicate that first-order state dependence is...