This paper examines the effect of international migration on the welfare of family members left behind at the origin. Previous literature has produced inconclusive evidence, with some studies suggesting that migration reduces income poverty while others show that non-migrants bear a larger work...

The standard microeconomic assumption of a household utility function raises two theoretical problems: it contradicts methodological individualism and it ignores economic phenomena such as income and consumption sharing, division of labor, externalities and altruism within a household. This...

Using a collective model of consumption, we characterize optimal commodity taxes aimed at targeting specific individuals within the household. The main message is that distortionary indirect taxation can circumvent the agency problem of the household. Essentially, taxation should discourage less...