Essays on houshold decision making and labor market
- Autores: Pablo Lavado
- Directores de la Tesis: Pedro Mira (dir. tes.), Stéphane Bonhomme (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (UIMP) ( España ) en 2012
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Thierry Jean Dagnac (presid.), Jesús Carro (secret.), Jérôme Adda (voc.), Samuel Bentolila (voc.), Juan Antonio Orlando Knwoles (voc.)
- Materias:
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- Resumen
Identification and estimation of parameters of interest is one of the core topics in Economics.
The main objective of this dissertation is to provide with identification and estimation alternatives to long-standing topics of interest in Economics. First, the effect of fertility on female participation and, in particular, the effect of the first born child. Second, the intrahousehold power between husbands and wives.
Chapter 1 provides a survey of the available methods and results for estimating the effect of fertility on female labor supply. It examines instrumental variable estimation and then turn to panel data techniques. Finally, it provides a collection of estimates of the effect of fertility on female participation using instrumental variables and panel data at the same time. Results show that fertility dampens female participation. Moreover, the effect of the first born child is larger, in absolute value, than the second and the third and there are slightly differences between the second and the third. The estimation of these models reveals the importance of using instruments and fixed effects, or correlated random effects in the case on non-linear models. The estimation of models relaxing some assumptions are left for further research. Those models will consider dynamic and state dependence, children as predetermined, non-linear dynamic models with fixed effects and bias correction and use of instrumental variables in non-linear dynamic models with fixed effects.
Chapter 2 estimates the effect of the first born child on female labor supply using family planning failures as sources of exogenous variations and developing a dynamic discrete choice model of participation and contraception decisions. Results show that the effect of the first born child is -12.4 pp, twice the effect of the second (-5.6 pp) and almost three times the effect of the third (-4.9 pp). However, this figures hide a large heterogeneity in the effects important in designing maternity leave, child care and family planning policies. In particular, four factors play an important role in the magnitude of the effect of the first born child on female work: education, past experience, child's age and preferences for leisure and children.
The Chapter also estimates Local Average Treatment Effects (LATE). The LATEs are - 12.3 pp, -3.8 pp and -5.6, for the first, second and third order birth, respectively. Finally, the Chapter gives some welfare considerations, understood as lifetime expected discounted utility differential. First, living in a world with perfect control of fertility increases utility in approximately 35 thousand dollars per woman on average. Second, living in a world where contraception costs are high, like in Africa, decreases utility in approximately 115 thousand dollars per woman on average.
Chapter 3 estimates the relative importance of female's utility within household utility.
Based on revealed preferences approach, I exploit internal migration as a household source of variation in which husbands and wives are involved as decision makers. Results show that households weight differently female's and male's utility. In particular one unit of male's utility is equivalent to two thirds units of female's utility. The elasticity of substitution between consumption and leisure is equal to 0.6. The risk aversion parameter is equal to 2.69, which reflects that females and males are willing to share resources within the household and not have very unequal levels of consumption and leisure.
