A Public Good Version of the Collective Household Model: An Empirical Approach with an Application to British Household Data

In this paper we consider an empirical collective household model of time allocation for twoearnerhouseholds. The novelty of this paper is that we estimate a version of the collectivehousehold model, where the internally produced goods and the externally purchased goodsare assumed to be public. The empirical results suggest that: (1) Preferences of men andwomen differ; (2) Although there are significant individual variations, on average the utilityfunctions of men and women are equally weighted in the household utility function; (3)Differences in the ratio of the partners' hourly wages are explanatory for how individualutilities are weighted in the household utility function. (4) The female's preference forhousehold production is influenced by family size, but this does not hold for the male; (5)Both the male and the female have a backward-bending labor supply curve; (6) Labor-supplycurves are forward-bending with respect to the partner's wage rate; (7) Our model rejects theunitary <I>Slutsky</I> symmetry condition.<BR><BR>This discussion paper has resulted in a publication in the <A href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/91m8442036767052/">'Review of Economics of the Household'</A>, 2008, 6(2), 169-91.