Household Production Theory and Models

The chapter focuses on household production theory and models for non-agriculturalhouseholds, largely in developed countries. The objectives of the paper are: (1) to presentseveral types of microeconomic models of household decision making and highlight theirimplications for empirical food demand studies and (2) to presents an empirical application ofinsights gained from household production theory for a household input demand system fitted tounique data on the US household sector over the post-World War II period, 1948-1996.Regarding future research, suggestions are presented as to how food demand studies might builda stronger bridge to new models of household behavior, including a household productionfunction and allocation of the household’s time and full-income constraints.[...]