We conducted an experiment on the nature of income sharing within 95 established couples in Germany. In a first step, the partners revealed their individual preferences by making consumption choices independently. In a second step, decisions were taken jointly over five different rounds with...

Using non-cooperative game theory the effects of mediation on the divorce rate and on the utility of the spouses are analysed. Two kinds of mediation are considered: restricted mediation that reduces the costs of divorce and extended mediation that additionally may prevent divorces by...

We investigate the determinants of couples labor supply within an experimental setting. On the one hand, we are interested in the effect of taxes on couples labor supply, but on the other hand we focus on factors beyond purely economic incentives: the role of the social norm of a male...

This paper analyzes the labor supply response of married women to their husbands' job losses (Added Worker Effect) due to the recent economic crisis in Turkey. Identification is achieved by exploiting the exogenous variation in the output of male-dominated sectors hard-hit by the crisis....

We use a unique survey of Danes who have emigrated between 1987 and 2002 to study intra-family decision-making on international migration. Our survey reached 582 respondents with a Danish partner who was the same as before emigration. We model family decision-making in a bargaining framework and...

In Germany, it has become conventional wisdom that the economic uncertainty associated fixed-term employment contracts prevents young couples from realizing their desire to have children. From a research perspective, it is however far from clear whether fixed-term contracts are the obstacle to...

This paper explores the implications of gender-based income taxation in a non-cooperative model of a couple's time allocation between market work and providing a household public good. We find that the optimal structure of differential taxation by gender is solely determined by spouses' relative...

The birth of children often shifts the power balance within a family. If family decisions are made according to the spouses' welfare function, this shift in power may lead to a time consistency problem. The allocation of resources after the birth of children may differ from the ex-ante optimal...

We present the results of an experiment that measures social preferences within couples in a context where intra-household pay-off inequality can be reduced at the cost of diminishing household income. We measure social norms regarding this efficiency-equality trade-off and implement a...

Complementary to microsimulation studies focusing on the impact of labor supply as a choice of hours worked we shed light on another variable that survey data are not capable of taking into account: the choice of work effort. Our aim is to investigate the effect of individual and joint taxation...