There is some controversy in the field of household economics regarding the efficiency of household decisions. We make the point that a flexible specification of spousal preferences and the household production technology precludes the possibility of using revealed preference data on household...

Our research analyzes the effect of changes in migration policies and the accession to the European Union of former countries of emigration, considering the crucial role played by migrants in an aging society. We focus on the demand of family-care workers by using the last five years of the...

In recent years the increase in the divorce rate in many advanced countries and the predominance of female-headed families among the poor has generated much interest in the relationship between divorce and the welfare of mothers and children. In this paper I will review a small body of economic...

While a large literature has focused on the impact of parental investments on child cognitive development, very little is known about the children's own investments. Information on how children use their time separately from parents is probably less informative for babies and toddlers, but it...

This paper investigates the effects of public childcare availability in Italy on mothers' working status and children's scholastic achievements. We use a newly available dataset containing individual standardized test scores of pupils attending second grade of primary school in 2008-09 in...

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...

The growth in labor market participation among women with young children has raised concerns about the potential negative impact of the mother's absence from home on child outcomes. Recent data show that mother's time spent with children has declined in the last decade, while the indicators of...

This paper investigates the effects of public childcare availability in Italy on mothers' working status and children's scholastic achievements. We use a newly available dataset containing individual standardized test scores of pupils attending second grade of primary school in 2008-09 in...