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Behavioral Household Economics

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Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

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Abstract

Most decisions regarding the labor market are not taken by individuals alone but jointly by couples or households. This chapter presents insights from behavioral and experimental economics, biology, and anthropology to understand what shapes these decisions. It specifically focuses on results from a recently growing literature that has been conducting experiments involving multiple household members to study their decisions. The first part presents three behavioral dimensions that are important to consider when studying decisions within households: (1) the nature of the returns that are at stake for the couple, which concerns, for example, whether salaries are monetary or of other kind, (2) differences in individual preferences between household members and especially men and women, and (3) the approach to bargaining by the different household members. The second part discusses theoretical models commonly used in household economics and what results from experimental studies can tell us about them.

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Acknowledgments

Alistair Munro gratefully acknowledges the support of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science’s Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI; no. 17H02498). Astrid Hopfensitz gratefully acknowledges support through the ANR under grant ANR-17-EURE-0010 (Investissements d’Avenir program) and ANR-15-CE33-0005-01 (JCJC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Toulouse School of Economics, Universite de Toulouse Capitole, Toulouse, France

    Astrid Hopfensitz

  2. National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo, Japan

    Alistair Munro

Authors
  1. Astrid Hopfensitz
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  2. Alistair Munro
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Correspondence to Astrid Hopfensitz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. UNU-MERIT & Princeton University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Klaus F. Zimmermann

Section Editor information

  1. GATE UMR 5824, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), University of Lyon, Ecully, Lyon, France

    Marie Claire Villeval

  2. CORTEX Laboratory of Excellence, Lyon, France

    Marie Claire Villeval

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Hopfensitz, A., Munro, A. (2021). Behavioral Household Economics. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_226-1

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