Suchergebnisse

In "Unpacking the Household: Informal Property Rights Around the Hearth" (Yale Law Journal, 2006) Robert Ellickson argues that as long as members of a household expect their relationship to continue, norms, rather than law, will determine allocations among them. More specifically, Ellickson argues that in "midgame" household members either ignore the "endgame" completely or, if they do take endgame considerations into account, the relevant endgame considerations are determined by norms rather than by law. This paper examines the fit between Ellickson's claims and four bargaining models that economists have used to understand interactions within household and families.

Does joint taxation disadvantage women? To answer that question, this paper begins by reviewing unitary and bargaining models of intrafamily allocation, and then discusses the determinants of "bargaining power" in a world without taxes. It argues that wage rates rather than earnings are determinants of bargaining power, and then argues that productivity in household production is also a source of bargaining power. In the absence of human capital effects, joint taxation does not appear to disadvantage women in either divorce threat or separate spheres bargaining. Hence, the claim that joint taxation disadvantages women, if it is correct, depends on effects that operate through the incentives to accumulate human capital. But a satisfactory analysis of the effects of taxation on human capital awaits the further development of dynamic models of family bargaining. -- Joint taxation ; family bargaining ; household production

This volume contains twelve papers by Robert Pollak--four previously unpublished--that explore the theory of the cost-of-living index. In addition to Pollak's classic paper "The Theory of the Cost-of-Living Index, the book includes papers on subindexes, the intertemporal and social cost-of-living indexes, welfare comparisons and equivalence scales, and consumer durables in the cost-of-living index.