When individuals compare themselves to those with the same wage-rate, status concerns–Keeping up with the Joneses–lead individuals to work who otherwise would have chosen not to, and, for them, well-being is a decreasing function of the wage rate.

When dealing with labour supply, the classical microeconomic theory does not investigate cautiously the way consumer-workers allocate time. The non-working time (more often called "leisure") is assumed to be a normal good on which the individual preferences are defined. This paper is based on...

When individuals choose from whatever alternatives available to them the one that maximizes their utility then it is always desirable that the government provide them with as many alternatives as possible. Individuals, however, do not always choose what is best for them and their mistakes may be...

The literature on household behavior contains hardly any empirical research on the withinhousehold distributional effect of tax-benefit policies. We simulate this effect in the framework of a collective model of labor supply when shifting from a joint to an individual taxation system in France....

The positive correlation between hourly wages and height, which results in higher labor supply of tall individuals, is well-documented in the literature. Accepting the utilitarian perspective and assuming that height does not affect utility implies that linking income taxes to height is welfare...

We model consumption and labor supply behavior of a couple in a non-cooperative setting. Using minimal assumptions, we prove that demand for public goods is characterized by three regimes. It is either determined by the preferences of one of the partners only (Husband Dictatorship or Wife...

We develop a method for distributional regression of joint multidimensional choice on nonlinear prices departing from a household model of labor supply that focuses on tax policy effects. Our distribution functions are derived under minimal theoretical assumptions and have a simple structure. We...

Several recent papers have shown the relevance of collective models for the empirical investigation of household labor supply and consumption. Yet the estimation of collective models in the presence of non-linear budget sets and participation decisions remains a daunting task. This paper...

This paper compares predictions obtained for the analysis of tax reforms with collective and unitary models of household labour supply and consumption behaviour. We simulate real world microdata by means of a collective approach, using a compound procedure of estimation and calibration based on...

This paper assesses the effects that an introduction of the French family splitting mechanism would have on German families' labour supply and intra-household consumption behaviour. We use simulated real world microdata created by means of a "deterministic" collective labour supply model. The...