the rotten kid theorem meets the samaritan s dilemma a familiar result in the economic theory of the family is becker s rotten kid theorem this theorem states that altruism by a family member will lead other selfish members to act efficiently from the family viewpoint we extend becker s one period model to two periods and show that parental altruism can result in an inefficiency known in other contexts as the samaritan s dilemma implications of this for transfer arrangements within the family and for the ricardian equivalence theorem are drawn

corruption and the shadow economy one way or two way street this paper attempts to bring some resolution to the relation between corruption and the shadow economy while previous research focuses on the static relationship between the two we account for dynamics using a panel vector autoregression model and consider influences from the official economy and institutional quality using cross national panel data for 108 countries over the period 1984 2006 results show a bidirectional relationship with initial complementarity and substitution over time thus the nature of the two way street is shown to change over time and our consideration of dynamics reveals the complementarity substitution switch

a theory of socio economic disparities in health over the life cycle motivated by the observation that medical care explains only a relatively small part of the ses health gradient we present a life cycle model that incorporates several additional behaviours that potentially explain jointly a large part of observed disparities as a result the model provides not only a conceptual framework for the ses health gradient but more generally an improved framework for the production of health we derive novel predictions from the theory by performing comparative dynamic analyses more generally our comparative dynamic method can be applied to models of similar form e g human capital health deficits firm investment to name a few

children as collective goods and divorce settlements the failure of many divorced fathers to comply with court mandated child support awards has been identified as a major reason why a growing number of children live in poverty in female headed households this paper presents a model that seeks to explain why so many divorced fathers allow their children s welfare to suffer as a consequence of divorce the point of departure is the recognition that children are collective consumption goods from the point of view of the father and mother within marriage proximity and altruism serve to overcome the free rider problem associated with the provision of public goods however on divorce the noncustodial parent suffers a loss of control over the allocative decisions of the custodial parent and it is not feasible for the couple to achieve a pareto optimal allocation of their joint resources a model of optimal marriage contracts is constructed in which a couple decides on the allocation of resources within marriage and on the terms of a settlement in the event

human capital and the risk of divorce an asset in search of a property right the new home economics 2 5 6 7 analyzes investments in human capital or children in terms of a model of household decision making traditionally a harmony of interests between the spouses is assumed to prevail and this is formalized by postulating a household utility function 9 or by assuming the maximization of the joint income of the husband and wife 6 recently the approach has been modified to admit the potential for marital disharmony 3 4 the present paper follows this lead and considers how family investments in each partner s human capital is conditioned by the risk of divorce the focus on human capital rather than say tangible capital is of particular interest because of this asset s illiquidity and the fact that the courts have generally not recognized the property rights of one spouse in the human capital acquired by the other during the marriage it demonstrates that the absence of property rights generally produces a sub optimal pattern of human capital investment specifically the risk of divorce leads to overinvestment in human capital with this outcome being more likely the greater the fragility of the marital relationship

the effect of taxes on labor supply in the underground economy this paper uses micro data from a randomized survey carried out in the metropolitan area of quebec city canada to analyze the decision to evade taxes and work in the underground economy the results indicate that taxes distort labor market activities away from the regular sector to the underground sector but the distortion is small for the average worker the distortion is large however for particular groups of the population such as welfare claimants copyright 1994 by american economic association

parenthood and the gender gap in pay we compare the income and wage trajectories of women to those of their male partners before and after parenthood focusing on the within couple gap allows us to control for both observed and unobserved attributes of the spouse and to estimate both short and long term effects of entering parenthood we find that 15 years after the first child has been born the male female gender gaps in income and wages have increased by 32 and 10 percentage points respectively in line with a collective labor supply model the magnitude of these effects depends on counterfactual relative incomes or wages within the family

the work money does we present independent estimates of the two sides of fisher s identity mv pt exclusive of the financial circulation these show a fair agreement although or because measurement is rough and approximate total transactions are quite stable at 5 5 times national income and thus shed no new light on the transactions demand for money on the money side the overall velocity of circulation rises from 13 in 1950 to 23 in 1978 this is attributed to a strong increase of bank money velocity which by now far exceeds the cash velocity of 16 it may well rise further

tax planning of married couples and intra household income inequality abstract this paper examines tax planning of married couples under separate taxation it shows that concerns about the intra household income distribution prevent couples from minimizing tax payments the empirical analysis exploits a specific feature of the german tax system which allows married couples to save taxes by deviating from the default symmetric payroll tax treatment and assigning favorable tax treatment to the primary earner and unfavorable tax treatment to the secondary earner based on a representative random sample of individual tax files we find that a couple is less likely to choose the tax minimizing treatment if tax planning is associated with a larger decline of the net of tax income of the secondary earner this applies regardless of whether the husband or the wife is the main earner however couples where the wife is the main earner are generally more reluctant to assign the more favorable tax treatment to the wife

pigou meets ramsey gender based taxation with non cooperative couples abstract this paper explores the implications of gender based income taxation in a non cooperative model of household behavior in a first step we show how gender based taxes can act as pigou taxes and correct the externality induced by a non cooperative household equilibrium we find that the first best pigou tax rules are solely determined by spouses relative marginal rates of substitution between the public household good and private consumption breaking down this general rule into the primitives of the model the spouse with a comparative advantage in home production should be taxed at a higher rate in a second step we embed our non cooperative framework in a standard second best planning problem in which taxes serve a revenue raising purpose in this case the optimal structure of differential taxation by gender is partly determined by a ramsey type inverse elasticity rule and partly by a pigouvian tax element we show that these two forces work in opposite directions in determining whether men or women should be taxed at a higher rate and that either one could be dominant depending on the revenue raising position of the government this result is robust to the introduction of two groups of households that differ in their mode of decision making which can be either cooperative or non cooperative

intra household allocation of parental leave we introduce childcare sharing in a collective model of household behavior to investigate which factors make spouses increase or decrease their share of parental leave the concern about future consumption motivates parents to invest in their human capital and to limit their leave duration using relative income and the age difference between spouses as distribution factors we cannot reject pareto efficiency in childcare sharing higher relative incomes and larger age differences shift the conditional leave allocation towards the relatively poorer and younger partner respectively households with higher total income purchase more professional childcare

love and taxes and matching institutions we study a setting with search frictions in the marriage market and with incomplete contracting inside the family everyone prefers a partner that has high income and is a perfect emotional match but compromises must often be struck a high income earner may abstain from marrying a low income earner even though they would be a perfect match emotionally because the highincome earner may dislike the implicit income redistribution implied by the marriage redistributive income taxation may ease this problem income matching institutions that secure that people largely from the same income groups meet each other can substitute for redistribution so that optimal redistribution is reduced we also introduce a divorce option redistributive taxation is shown both to further and stabilize marriage

the family as the health producer when spouses are nash bargainers the grossman model is extended to a situation in which the family is regarded as the producer of individual health and spouses are nash bargainers the model has implications for the interaction between family structure income and the stocks of health capital and the bargaining strength of different family members the main insight is that the possibility of divorce affects the distribution of health capital between family members we analyse inter alia the impact on the distribution of health particularly regarding child health of changes in family policies related to the dissolution of the family

estimating the size of the shadow economy in spain a structural model with latent variables there has recently been a revival of international interest in measuring the size of the shadow economy the current study adopts an approach to the spanish case that is based on the theory of unobservable variables this methodology involves the estimation of structural models mimic which analyses a set of causes of the shadow economy while simultaneously taking into account its influence upon a series of indicators the proposed model permits the determination of a relative evolution over time of the size of the shadow economy which requires the calibration of the model with an exogenous estimation in order to obtain real values the exogenous estimation employed is that obtained by a monetary method based on a money demand function the results show a considerable shadow economy measuring between 8 and 18 8 of gdp in the period 1976 2002 and demonstrate that the shadow economy is significantly influenced by the tax burden the degree of regulation and unit labour costs a positive correlation is

the effect of children on adult demands for health risk reductions we examine patterns in adults willingness to pay for health risk reductions we allow both their marginal utilities of income and their marginal disutilities from health risks to vary systematically with the structures of their households demand by adults for programs which reduce their own health risks is found to be influenced by 1 their parenthood status 2 the numbers of children in different age brackets currently in their households 3 the ages of the adults themselves 4 the latency period before they would fall ill and 5 whether there will still be children in the household at that time for younger adults willingness to pay by parents is greater than for non parents and increases with each additional young child for middle aged adults willingness to pay for corresponding risk reductions falls when teenagers are present and falls further with each additional teenager in the household language en

mommy tracks and public policy on self fulfilling prophecies and gender gaps in hiring and promotion abstract consider a model with two types of jobs the profitability of hiring a worker to a fast track job depends not only on his or her observable talent but also on incontractible effort we investigate whether self fulfilling expectations may lead to higher hiring or promotion standards for women if employers expect women to do more household work than men thereby exerting less effort in their paid job then women must be more talented to make it profitable to hire them specialization in the family will then result in women doing most of the household work such self fulfilling prophecies can be defeated by affirmative action or family policy however it is unlikely that temporary policy can move the economy to a symmetric equilibrium policy must be made permanent anti discrimination policy need not enhance efficiency and from a distribution viewpoint this is a policy with both winners and losers

transfers among divorced couples evidence and interpretation we analyze divorce settlements made by a cohort of whites who graduated from high school in 1972 the effects of spouses incomes on the divorce transfer are estimated and used to simulate the welfare effects of divorce on husbands wives and children under alternative assumptions about marriage contracts and the ability of a couple to continue coordinating resources in the aftermath of divorce we find a positive negative relationship between divorce transfers and the growth of husband s wife s earnings during marriage the estimated expenditure on children in the divorce state is only half the accustomed level during marriage

correction note on the demand for health with uncertainty and insurance abstract this paper proves the non existence of an optimal solution under the liljas liljas b 1998 the demand for health with uncertainty and insurance j health econ 17 153 170 type of insurance the reason for the non existence is that the insurance induces the individual to increase his time input relative to medical expenditure in the household production of health investment hence it distorts the balance of inputs in the production of health investment moreover it also distorts the household production for consumption goods through time constraints therefore this paper proposes an alternative insurance that covers the time loss due to illness and has an optimal solution

inefficient households and the mix of government spending a model is presented in which individuals can vote over government subsidies to a private good and over redistributive taxation the subsidized good is purchased and shared by couples who act noncooperatively while possibly being altruistic towards each other the framework allows a separation of the subsidy policy from redistributive policy in a majority voting equilibrium the subsidy is used exclusively to correct the individuals spending pattern the results suggest that spending on private goods should be an important item in government expenditures when there is strong positive income bias in the political process and or when household decisions are relatively inefficient

the mix of social and private provision of goods and services abstract in some countries health insurance and education are supplied as social goods at near zero prices and funded from taxation this paper analyses a case where such provision competes with income supplements as a redistribution device and where taxes or transferable vouchers influence the take up of the social goods compared to alternatives available in a private market each consumer chooses to consume either social or private goods and a vertical market segmentation results from differential demand for quality

insurance and imperfect financial markets in grossman s demand for health model a reply to tabata and ohkusa abstract in the article by tabata and ohkusa they show that the insurance system set out in liljas liljas b 1998a the demand for health with uncertainty and insurance journal of health economics 17 153 170 does not have an optimal solution and propose a new formulation it is argued here that even though the new model works mathematically it has a less realistic economic foundation furthermore generalizing the grossman model by making the marginal utility of income variable over time is suggested to be more relevant in the case where there are imperfect financial markets and a simple example is provided overall there seems to be room for further theoretical extensions in the demand for health literature

nash bargained household decisions reply pierre andre chiappori s 1988 claim that the nash bargaining model is of weak empirical relevance and neither convenient nor really restrictive is incorrect nash bargained household behavior implies a rich set of empirical implications extending well beyond the pareto efficiency of intrafamily distributions by systematically accounting for the impact of opportunities outside the family on resource distribution within the family nash bargained demand theory considerably expands the scope of neoclassical demand theory such expansion can elucidate issues ranging from the impact of alimony and child support laws in developed societies to the intrafamily distribution of nutrition in less developed countries copyright 1990 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the saving behaviour of a two person household the facts that wives are typically younger than their husbands and that women typically live longer than men imply that wives may have more incentive to save for old age than do husbands a theoretical model of the determination of household saving and portfolio choice is introduced which takes into account differences in preferences for saving the most important result is that the level and the composition portfolio of saving and the time path of consumption are dependent on the distribution of income within the household women typically live longer than men and wives are typically younger than their husbands these two facts imply that preferences about saving for old age in married households with forward looking members may differ between husband and wife this paper presents a theoretical analysis of saving and portfolio behaviour if the members of the household have differ ent preferences over future consumption as compared to current consump tion the analysis stands in contrast to unitary models of household intertemporal allocation which assume that the household has a single utility function thus this paper is a contribution in a novel context to the burgeoning literature on intra household decision making the base case analysis is for a simple two person husband and wife1 two period model in which there is only one asset saving it is assumed that because of the two facts given at the start of the introductory paragraph the husband discounts the future more than the wife in section ii the implications of a non cooperative decision making process for the base case are derived see ulph 1988 for a non cooperative model of demand and

the demand for health with uncertainty and insurance this paper develops michael grossman s demand for health model by letting the depreciation rate depend upon the level of health by letting the incidence and size of illness be uncertain and by investigating how the individual s demand for health would be affected by the introduction of insurance beside the more theoretical results there are also some results with important policy implications when formulating the hypothetical scenario in willingness to pay wtp studies it is important whether the individual believes that the level of health is uncertain or not the existence of insurance could also affect the stated wtp amount taking this into account could therefore explain some of the differences in the wtp for seemingly identical health care programs in different countries or different areas in the same country

pareto optimal redistribution and private charity abstract when private charity exists and is motivated by utility interdependence a non pareto optimal outcome the free rider problem typically arises nevertheless incremental fiscal redistribution cannot achieve a paretian welfare improvement so long as private charity continues at positive levels donors respond to incremental fiscal redistribution by reducing their voluntary contributions by exactly a dollar for every dollar transferred in this way no net transfer is achieved unless incremental fiscal redistribution is pursued to the point where private contributions have been driven to zero alternatively a net transfer may be achieved by fiscal measures which affect donors marginal incentives to donate

a cournot nash model of family decision making this paper models a two person family each family member is utility maximising yet family members are interdependent because of caring and public goods within the family the two family members interdependent utility maximisation problems are first solved using a non cooperative or cournot nash game theoretic framework the cournot nash equilibrium is then used as a threat point in a bargaining game the paper provides a rigorous derivation of the properties of household demands a full analysis of the determinants of intra household resource allocation including the effect of varying household bargaining power and consideration of policy implications

tax transfer policies and the voluntary provision of public goods abstract the purpose of this paper is twofold first it extends previous models of non cooperative private funding of pure public goods by allowing both for distortionary taxation of private goods and for subsidies based on contributions to the public goods second it clarifies the type of behavioral and informational assumptions which are needed to insure neutrality of both lump sum and distortionary policies the analysis is developed in the context of fiscal federalism

nash bargained household decisions a rejoinder this note is a rejoinder to marjorie b mcelroy and mary jean horney s 1990 reply it discusses the scope of mcelroy and horney s previous results and the possibility of estimating a nash bargained model from independent observation of threat points copyright 1991 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

estimating the size of the danish shadow economy using the currency demand approach an attempt the currency demand approach provides some insight into the size and development of the shadow economy in denmark currency demand is statistically affected by tax rates the difference in currency demand is calculated by comparing the actual tax burden over time to the lowest tax burden in the period 1952 82 the shadow economy grew steadily to 10 per cent of gnp in 1977 and then fluctuated between 7 10 per cent of gnp for the period 1978 82 the calculated size fits nicely with the results obtained using the same

noncooperative bargaining models of marriage in this paper we discuss some simple noncooperative models of distribution within marriage in which the equilibria are not necessarily pareto optimal in which history and culture can affect which equilibrium is realized and in which distribution may depend on whether resources are controlled by the husband or by the wife recent moves away from single decision maker models of the family have permitted economists to address distribution within marriage and cooperative bargaining models have played the central role in these moves the next step is to permit strategic interaction between family members by modeling distribution within marriage as a noncooperative game noncooperative game theory allows great flexibility in specifying the rules of the game and unlike cooperative game theory imposes few a priori restrictions on the nature of equilibrium outcomes in particular noncooperative models neither assume nor imply that all equilibria are pareto optimal

static and intertemporal household decisions we discuss the most popular static and dynamic models of household behavior our main objective is to explain which aspects of household decisions different models can account for using this insight we describe testable implications identification results and estimation findings obtained in the literature particular attention is given to the ability of different models to answer various types of policy questions

weakest link public goods giving in kind or transferring money abstract this paper extends the analysis of weakest link public goods whose level equals the smallest of the agents provision levels by permitting an agent either to increase one s own provision or else augment both one s own provision and that of the other agent s nash equilibria may be either symmetric with agents matching one another s provision or else asymmetric with an in kind transfer by one agent to another an equilibrium with cash transfers but no in kind transfers may be pareto superior to one with only in kind transfers if agents differ in their efficiency then in kind transfers by the low cost agent may dominate a cash transfer the possibility of pareto improving transfers is enhanced as the number of agents increases

family specific investments and divorce with dynamically inconsistent households marital contracts and policy abstract this paper bridges two distinct areas of inquiry the economic theory of the family and behavioral research on time inconsistent preferences motivated by anecdotal and survey evidence suggesting that present bias plays a role in intra household decision making we propose a model in which hyperbolic discounting couples engage in home production activities thereby accumulating family specific capital over time at any given point in time the gains to continued marriage depend on the accumulated stock of this capital and a temporary random shock to match quality couples whose match quality deteriorates may choose to divorce and this is more likely to happen if past investments in family specific capital have been low we obtain three main sets of results first present biased preferences induce couples to underinvest in family specific capital and to overdivorce second sophisticated couples but not naive ones may choose to enter marriage on terms which make divorce more costly to obtain third the inefficiencies in the behavior of time inconsistent couples can be completely undone by means of earnings and divorce taxes that vary over the marital life cycle

demand for health a generalised grossman model the demand for health and medical care is analysed within a generalised grossman type health investment model its underlying assumptions are shown to differ from those employed earlier in a manner which avoids some of the criticisms levelled at grossman s model the comparative static predictions of the generalised model are examined and it is demonstrated that most previous health investment models are derivable from it also the present model is applicable to a new wider range of problems thus increasing the scope of economic explanations of health behaviour

currency demand and the growth of the underground economy in canada 1991 1995 the extent to which the recent introduction of a value added tax in canada contributed to the growth of the underground economy remains controversial if underground economy growth led to increased currency holdings and shifted the currency demand function forecasts for the period after the introduction of the tax should tend to underestimate currency holdings using a cointegration based error correction mechanism in vector autoregression models currency demand is estimated using quarterly data for 1968 1990 and dynamic forecasts are made for 1991 1995 on average currency demand is underpredicted but by a small amount the results are consistent with an increase in the underground economy of between 0 01 and 0 3 of gdp as a result of the new tax if changes in marginal direct tax rates are considered the underground economy may have grown between 0 1 and 0 7 of gdp in 1991 1995

market structure and price cost margins in a paper that has become a standard reference in the structure conductperformance approach to industrial economics cowling and waterson 1976 developed a theoretical rationale for expecting industry profitability to be positively correlated with the level of concentration their model based on a simple algebraic description of oligopoly behaviour has been interpreted as providing a justification for the common empirical practice of cross industry regression analysis of price cost margins in terms of concentration levels in the present paper we show that on further examination this model implies a joint determination of margins and concentration this provides some interesting comparative static results of relevance to inter industry differences in concentration levels equally however it leads to various cautionary insights concerning the meaning of price cost margin versus concentration regressions

collective household models principles and main results in the traditional approach to consumer behaviour it is assumed that households behave as if they were single decision making units this approach has methodological empirical and welfare economic deficiencies a valuable alternative to the traditional model is the collective approach to household behaviour the collective approach explicitly takes account of the fact that multi person households consist of several members which may have different preferences among these household members an intrahousehold bargaining process is assumed to take place in addition to providing an introduction to the collective approach this survey intends to show how different collective household models each with their own aims and assumptions are connected

gender power fertility and family policy the birth of children often shifts the balance of power within a family if family decisions are made according to the welfare function of the spouses this shift in power might cause a time consistency problem in a model of cooperative family decision making we show that this problem can lead to a systematic downward bias in fertility by keeping fertility low spouses mitigate the ex ante undesired shift in the balance of power that results from the presence of children this provides scope for welfare enhancing policy intervention we discuss to what extent existing family policy measures are suitable for overcoming the bias

a fresh look at the rotten kid theorem and other household mysteries gary becker s rotten kid theorem asserts that if all family members receive gifts of money income from a benevolent household member then even if the household head does not precommit to an incentive plan for family members it will be in the interest of selfish family members to maximize total family income i show by examples that the rotten kid theorem is not true without assuming transferable utility i find a simple condition on utility functions that is necessary and sufficient for there to be the kind of transferable utility needed for a rotten kid theorem while restrictive these conditions still allow one to apply the strong conclusions of the rotten kid theorem in an interesting class of examples

non monotonic health behaviours implications for individual health related behaviour in a demand for health framework a number of behaviours influence health in a non monotonic way physical activity and alcohol consumption for instance may be beneficial to one s health in moderate but detrimental in large quantities we develop a demand for health framework that incorporates the feature of a physiologically optimal level an individual may still choose a physiologically non optimal level because of the trade off in his or her preferences for health versus other utility affecting commodities however any deviation above or below the physiologically optimal level will be punished with respect to health distinguishing between two individual types we study a the qualitative properties of optimal time paths of health capital and health related behaviour b the perturbations of the optimal time paths that result from changes in exogenous parameters and c steady state properties predictions of the model and the implications for empirical analysis are discussed at length some comments on potential future extensions conclude the paper

economic abuse a theory of intrahousehold sabotage while research on domestic abuse in economics has to date almost exclusively focused on physical violence research in other disciplines has documented that abusive males frequently also use sabotage tactics to interfere with the employability and job performance of the victim this paper puts forward a theoretical framework that rationalizes why men may use labor market sabotage instrumentally to thwart their partners training or career efforts the model predicts a non monotonic relationship between the gender wage gap and intrahousehold sabotage committed by abusive males there are no one size fit all solutions when it comes to reducing the incidence of economic abuse instead specific measures have to be targeted at different types of households

size and scope of the underground economy in germany the objective of this paper is to improve estimations of the size and scope of the underground economy by introducing a new approach that combines the advantages of the two most commonly used approaches i e currency demand and multiple indicators multiple causes mimic the new approach is applied to germany among other things it is shown that the approach yields improved estimation results some policy perspectives are discussed in the concluding section

marital division of labor with risk of divorce the role of voice enforcement of contracts it is assumed that emotional ties can be relied on to enforce implicit marital contracts by voice therefore in the present model divorce has economic consequences not only because the economies of scale from living together are destroyed but also because the scope for such voice enforcement is weakened moreover perhaps surprisingly i find that it is ambiguous how an increase in the probability of divorce influences predivorce allocation of time even when preferences are assumed to be homothetic

employer investments in employee health implications for the family as health producer the model presented in this paper further extends the demand for health model in which the family is the producer of health investments to consider the case in which an employer has incentives for investing in the health of a family member the household and the employer are assumed to interact strategically in the production of health the general insight provided is that the conditions which determine the nature of the relationship between the employer and the employee for instance market conditions production technologies taxes and government regulation will also affect the allocation of health investments and health capital within the family

keeping it off the books an empirical investigation of firms that engage in tax evasion this article uses a unique dataset that contains detailed information on firms from around the world to investigate factors that affect under reporting behaviour the empirical strategy employed exploits the nature of the dependent variable which is interval coded and uses interval regression which provides an asymptotically efficient estimator provided that the classical linear model assumptions hold these assumptions are investigated using standard diagnostic tests that have been modified for the interval regression model evidence is presented that shows that the firms in all regions engage in under reporting regression results indicate that government corruption has the single largest causal effect on under reporting resulting in the percentage of sales not reported to the tax authority being 51 3 higher taxes have the second single largest causal effect on under reporting resulting in the percentage of sales not reported to the tax authority being 18 0 higher followed by access to financing

on the empirical implementation of some game theoretic models of household labor supply this paper discusses some issues in the empirical implementation of game theoretic models of household labor supply in particular we focus on the identification problems inherent in many of these models as an illustration we estimate a game theoretic model which uses data on preferred working hours as additional identifying information

intra family distribution of paid work time this article analyses the intra family distribution of paid work time in five european countries france germany italy spain and the uk to that end we formulate a collective model which allows us to characterize the efficient labour supply decisions of each spouse this two equation model is then simultaneously estimated by using national panel data drawn from the european community household panel echp 1994 2001 empirical results clearly show that in all sample countries the labour supply of wives is affected by own wages household and own nonlabour incomes and the number of children whereas evidence for husbands differs across countries

theories of monopoly capitalism abstract this article presents a survey of theories of monopoly capitalism the defining characteristic of monopoly capitalism is that developed capitalist economies are seen as essentially dominated by firms which operate in oligopolistic industries it discusses in chronological order the contributions of hilferding lenin kalecki steindl baran and sweezy and cowling to the monopoly capitalism approach by drawing out some common features of the authors discussed we arrive at an implicit view of the nature of theories of monopoly capitalism the macroeconomic aspects of monopoly capitalism are discussed with emphasis on the implications for the level of economic activity a further section discusses the international aspects of the monopoly capital approach the final section of the paper reviews criticisms of the theories of monopoly capitalism with concentration on those advanced from a marxist perspective

a model of imperfect competition with keynesian features the recent literature on the reappraisal of keynes has viewed keynesian equilibria as arising when prices are fixed and effective demands and supplies are equilibrated through the adjustment of quantities one problem with this approach is that it lacks a theory of price determination in particular of why prices are fixed in the present paper we show that a number of keynesian features arise in a model in which prices are fully flexible but where agents have some monopoly power one advantage of this approach is that it provides a theory of the determination of both prices and quantities

the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior in households whose allocation decisions can be represented as nash bargained household decisions extrahousehold environmental parameters eeps serve as pure shifters of the threat points the comparative statics of changes in demands due to changes in these eeps are given these are incorporated into a comprehensive statement of the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior including a nash generalization of barten s 1966 fundamental matrix equation of the theory of consumer demand estimation and data requirements are discussed along with nested testing of the following structure the neoclassical model is nested in the nash bargained model which in turn is nested in an unrestricted model of household demands emphasized throughout is the enriched menu of explanatory variables for demand analysis provided by the nash model as well as the model s ability to jointly analyze i household formation and ii intrahousehold allocation decisions

strategic information acquisition and the mitigation of global warming abstract we consider the strategic role of uncertainty and information acquisition for the mitigation of global warming before the countries decide on their contribution to a mitigation of global warming they may invest in information about the country specific benefit of reductions of the emissions of greenhouse gases we show that information acquisition has a substantial strategic value countries may prefer not to learn their benefit of climate protection even if information acquisition does not involve a direct cost this strategic information choice may further decrease the efficiency of the public good provision

the family as the health producer when spouses act strategically the grossman model has been extended recently in order to take account of the fact that most people lead their lives in a family using frameworks in which family members respectively a have common preferences and b are nash bargainers these models however do not consider individual incentives for behaving strategically in the model presented in this paper spouses interact strategically both in the production of own health and in the production of health of other family members we analyse inter alia the impact on the distribution of health of changes in family policies such as child allowance and custody rules

the demand for health some new empirical evidence this paper presents some new estimates of the pure investment and pure consumption models of the demand for health in contrast to previous studies the paper presents parameter estimates of both reduced form and structural demand for health care equations the latter which are obtained by treating health capital as a latent variable in a recursive equation system provide a safer way of checking the consistency of the model s predictions with the data the present analysis of the pure consumption model differs from previous analyses in its recognition of the dependency of the shadow price of initial assets on the entire lifetime profiles of the model s exogenous variables the paper also explores the implications in terms of reliability of parameter estimates of the failure on the part of previous studies to recognize this

the political economy of monopoly and competition a critique of monopoly and stagnation theory abstract this paper examines critically the kaleckian theory of monopoly capitalism proposed by cowling 1982 the supply side of the model is shown to be incapable of providing an aggregate degree of monopoly and the neglect of inter sectoral competition is highlighted on the demand side there is little indication of the source of stagnationary tendencies it is the emphasis on collusion over conflict which underpins stagnation the model is characterised by its emphasis on distribution and exchange at the expense of production relations and is an inadequate representation of monopoly capitalism

the family as producer of health an extended grossman model deriving a model where each family member is the producer of his own and other family members health shows that the family will not try to equalise marginal benefits and marginal costs of health capital for each family member they will rather invest in health until the rate of marginal consumption benefits equals the rate of marginal net effective costs of health capital the level of compensation in the social insurance system the effective price of care health related information and transfer payments will all affect the production possibility set and therefore the optimal level and distribution of family health

separate spheres bargaining and the marriage market this paper introduces the separate spheres bargaining model a new model of distribution within marriage it differs from divorce threat bargaining models e g manser brown mcelroy horney in that the threat point is not divorce but a noncooperative equilibrium within marriage this noncooperative equilibrium reflects traditional gender roles the predictions of our model thus differ from those of divorce threat bargaining models in the separate spheres model cash transfer payments to the mother and payments to the father can but need not imply different equilibrium distributions in existing marriages in the long run the distributional effects of transfer policies may be substantially altered by changes in the marriage market equilibrium

family policy with non cooperative families we consider a non cooperative model of a family s time allocation between market work and providing a home produced family public good such as child care or care for the elderly the model predicts underprovision of the public good because of crowding out this does not necessarily warrant public provision in contrast to other approaches in family economics we find that attempts to redistribute between spouses may alter the final distribution within the marriage and that such a policy may be pareto improving we also find that some degree of progressivity of the income tax can be welfare improving

altruism in the family and selfishness in the market place adam smith argued in a famous passage that people are selfish in their market transactions it is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own interest we address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self love and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages 1937 p 14 in an earlier study he said with irony we are not ready to suspect any person of being defective in selfishness 1853 p 446 selfishness in market transactions has been assumed in practically all subsequent discussions of the economic system objections were dismissed with vague allusions to human nature or with an assertion that altruism loses out to selfishness in the struggle to survive in the market sector yet altruism is generally recognized to be important within a family again adam smith said

tax evasion and the demand for currency in norway and sweden is there a hidden relationship variables associated with the level of hidden economic activity are examined in terms of their effects on the demand for currency in norway and sweden aggregate time series of marginal tax rates are compiled for this purpose no such effects are evident for norway while in the case of sweden the demand for currency was found to be significantly related to marginal tax rates these estimates are then used as a basis for deriving an estimate of the size of the hidden economy in sweden an analysis of the assumptions underlying this procedure shows that the uncertainty involved in applying the currency approach to measuring the size of the hidden economy is so great as to make it hazardous to rely on such estimates