The 1980s tax reforms and the changing dispersion of wages offer one of the best opportunities yet to estimate labor supply effects. Nevertheless, changing sample composition, aggregate shocks, the changing composition of the tax paying population, and discontinuities in the tax system create...

This paper develops a new concept of separability with overlapping groups. This is shown to provide a useful empirical and theoretical framework for investigating the grouping of goods and prices. It is a generalisation of weak separability in which goods are allowed to enter more than one group...

We present identification and estimation results for the "collective" model of labour supply in which there are discrete choices, censoring of hours and nonparticipation in employment. We derive the collective restrictions on labour supply functions and contrast them with restrictions implied by...

This paper examines changes in the distribution of wages using bounds to allow for the impact of non-random selection into work. We show that bounds constructed without any economic or statistical assumptions can be informative. However, since employment rates in the UK are often low they are...

This paper examines alternative approaches to wage subsidy programmes. It does this in the context of a recent active labour market reform for the young unemployed in Britain. This “New Deal” reform and the characteristics of the target group are examined in detail. We discuss theoretical...

We suggest a methodology to calibrate a collective model with household-specific bargaining rules and marriage-specific preferences that incorporate leisure externalities. The empirical identification relies on the assumption that some aspects of individual preferences remain the same after...

A framework for simplified implementation of the collective model of labor supply decisions is presented in the context of fiscal reforms in the UK. Through its collective form the model accounts for the well known problem of distribution between wallet and purse, a broadly debated issue which...

This paper uses British panel data to investigate single women’s labour supply changes in response to three tax and benefit policy reforms that occurred in the 1990s. These reforms changed individuals’ work incentives and we use them to identify changes in labour supply. We find evidence of...

Empirical demand systems that do not impose unreasonable restrictions on preferences are typically non-linear. We show, however, that all popular systems possess the property of conditional linearity. A computationally attractive iterated linear least squares estimator (ILLE) is proposed for...