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...

We develop a simple model of household time allocation decisions under strong functional form assumptions regarding preferences and household production technology. We argue that the specification is general when allowing for unrestrictive forms of population heterogeneity in the parameters...

In this paper we analyze the relationship between the income sources of custodial divorced parents and their expenditure patterns. We use data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to directly investigate the issue of whether or not divorced mothers receiving child support income spend larger...

We formulate a model of household behavior in which cooperation is costly and in which these costs vary across households. Some households rationally decide to behave noncooperatively, which in our context is an efficient outcome. An intriguing feature of the model is that, while the welfare of...

Our study analyses the costs and benefits of early child care for mothers’ labour supply and child development in Italy, exploring the role of the selection criteria used by local governments to assign child care slots. In Italy, only around 13% of the demand for public child care...

While a large literature has focused on the impact of parental investments on child cognitive development, very little is known about the role of child?s own in- vestments. Information on how children invest their time separately from parents is probably little informative for babies and...

In this paper we utilize a model of household investments in the cognitive development of children to explore the impact of various transfer policies on the distribution of child cognitive outcomes in target populations. We develop a cost criterion that can be used to compare the cost...

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...