Intrafamily Bargaining and Household Decisions

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-VIII

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2. Introduction

   • Notburga Ott

   Pages 1-5

3. Models of the ‘new home economics’

   • Notburga Ott

   Pages 6-18

4. Family decisions as a bargaining problem

   • Notburga Ott

   Pages 19-32

5. A Nash bargaining model for household decisions

   • Notburga Ott

   Pages 33-45

6. Time allocation in a static bargaining model with household production

   • Notburga Ott

   Pages 46-67

7. A dynamic model with accumulation of human capital

   • Notburga Ott

   Pages 68-97

8. Pareto efficiency of family decisions

   • Notburga Ott

   Pages 98-109

9. The binding force of intrafamily contracts

   • Notburga Ott

   Pages 110-126

10. Introducing uncertainty: the possibility of conflict

    • Notburga Ott

    Pages 127-143

11. Empirical tests of the bargaining approach

    • Notburga Ott

    Pages 144-160

12. Survey of empirical bargaining models

    • Notburga Ott

    Pages 161-176

13. Empirical evidence of the bargaining approach - first findings with German data

    • Notburga Ott

    Pages 177-195

14. Concluding remarks

    • Notburga Ott

    Pages 196-198

15. Back Matter

    Pages 199-242

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A model of household decisions based on a bargaining approach is developed providing a comprehensive framework for the analysis of family behavior. Treating the family as an economic organization, household behavior is explained by the cooperation of utility maximizing individuals. The difference to traditional microeconomic household models is that theassumption of a joint household utility function is abandoned. Instead of this, a game theoretic approach is used to model family decisions as a result of intrafamily bargaining. Considering the development of the spouses` human capital in a dynamic approach, the long-term effects of intrafamily specialization in market work and work at home are analyzed. Onemajor finding is that in a dynamic setting non-Pareto efficient allocations may result. Empirical tests demonstrate the relevanace of the bargaining approach.

• Bevölkerungsökonomie
• Familienökonomie
• Family Economics
• Spieltheorie
• fertility
• game theory
• human capital
• institutions
• microeconomics
• population
• population economics
• production
• stability
• welfare

• Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt 11, Germany

  Notburga Ott

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