Lennart Flood

Gender Differences in Time Use over the Life Course in France, Italy, Sweden, and the US

Abstract This contribution analyzes how men and women in France, Italy, Sweden, and the United States use their time over the life cycle and the extent to which societal and institutional contexts influence the gender division of labor. In order to test the hypothesis that contextual factors play a crucial role in shaping time allocation, this study considers countries that diverge considerably in terms of welfare state regime, employment and paid working time systems, family policies, and social norms. Using national time-use surveys for the late 1990s and early 2000s and regression techniques, the study not only finds large gender discrepancies in time use in each country at all stages of life but also determines that institutional contexts, in particular the design of family policies and employment regimes, do shape gender roles in different ways, and that Sweden displays the lowest gender gap in time allocation across the life course.

The Future European Labor Supply: The Critical Role of the Family

The European employment strategy initiated in 1997 is critically dependent upon the further integration of women into the labor market. The European Union has set a specific target employment rate for women of 60 percent by 2010 and is also committed to providing more and better child care facilities. This gender focus is reinforced by the requirement for gender mainstreaming in all aspects of European employment policy. There is an implied Europe-wide, universal policy of encouraging female labor-market participation and reducing the care work performed by domestic labor. However, the European Commission continues to have limited competence in areas of family, social, and welfare policy. As a result, these common employment objectives for women are thus being pursued against a background of quite different systems of social, family, welfare, and indeed labor-market organization. These systems have different economic and employment implications, such that the outcomes of the common European employment strategy will also be highly variable.

A Monte Carlo simulation study of Tobit models

This study focuses on a comparison of different kinds of Tobit models. According to the findings, a simple Tobit I method can produce results that are similar to and in some cases better than much more sophisticated methods. This is especially true if the participation or index equation is incorrectly specified.

A Monte Carlo Evaluation of Labor Supply Models

In the area of labor supply and taxes advanced microeconometric methods have been developed in order to measure wage and income elasticities. Large variations in estimated elasticities have previously been reported in the literature. The purpose of the present study is to assess the sources for these discrepancies, and propose a robust estimator. According to our findings the commonly used maximum-likelihood estimator is sensitive to measurement errors in those variables that are needed in order to construct the individuals budget sets. An iterative least squares estimator is preferred in small samples under several forms of specification and measurement errors.

A Monte Carlo evaluation of discrete choice labour supply models

This paper is based on a Monte Carlo simulation in order to evaluate the properties of the discrete labour supply model. The data is generated by a continuous model and a discrete choice model is estimated assuming a translog utility function. The robustness of the results for different number of points in the discrete choice set, as well as for measurement errors in income and hours are compared. The discrete model produces similar results as the ‘true’ continuous model and apart from large measurement errors in hours these results are robust.

Using bootstrap to obtain standard errors of system tobit coefficients

Abstract Nelson and Olson (1978) suggested a two-stage procedure in order to estimate a system of limited dependent variables. Amemiya (1979) derived the asymptotic standard errors of these estimates, for the case when one of the equation is non-limited. However when all equations are limited the asymptotic standard errors have not been derived. In this paper we estimate the standard errors of such a model by the bootstrap technique. According to our results, the discrete as well as the normal bootstrap tends to underestimate the true variability. However a simple transformation of the residuals used in the bootstrap improve these results.

Are demand elasticities affected by politically determined tax levels? Simultaneous estimates of gasoline demand and price

Raising the price of fossil fuels is a key component of any effective policy to deal with climate change. Just how effective such policies are is decided by the price elasticities of demand. Many papers have studied this without recognising that not only is there a demand side response: quantities are decided by the price but also there is a reverse causality: the level of consumption affects the political acceptability of the taxes which are the main component of the final price. Thus prices affect consumption and consumption levels, in turn, have an affect on taxes and thus consumer prices. This article estimates these functions simultaneously to show that there is indeed an effect on the demand elasticity.

Arbeitszeitmuster und Einkommensverteilung von Haushalten im internationalen Vergleich

In allen OECD Landern sind zwei bedeutende Trends zu finden: Erstens, die zunehmende Partizipation von Frauen am Arbeitsmarkt und zweitens der damit verbundene Wandel der familialen Erwerbsmuster vom mannlichen Alleinverdienerhaushalt zum Zweiverdienerhaushalt mit stark variierenden und komplexen Familienstrukturen. Die bisherige Forschung hat sich ausfuhrlich mit der Frauenerwerbstatigkeit auseinandergesetzt, und einen Zusammenhang zwischen dem Muster der Arbeitsmarktbeteiligung von Frauen und der Zusammensetzung von Haushaltseinkommen angenommen. Bislang fehlen jedoch Untersuchungen daruber, wie sich die Frauenerwerbsbeteiligung und die verschiedenen Arbeitszeitmuster auf die Einkommensverteilung generell bzw. fur einzelne Haushalte mit unterschiedlichen demographischen oder lebenszyklischen Charakteristika auswirken. Forschungsbedarf besteht fur einzelne Landern, wo der Einflus der veranderten Partizipationsraten von Mannern und Frauen auf die lebenszyklische Verteilung von Einkommen bislang kaum untersucht wurde. Aber auch beim Landervergleich bieten die Interdependenzen verschiedener Arbeitsmarkte und wohlfahrtsstaatlicher Regulierungen sowohl in Bezug auf die Erwerbsbeteiligung von Haushalten als auch in Bezug auf auf die Einkommensverteilung ein breites Untersuchungsfeld.

A Monte Carlo comparison of system Tobit estimators

Abstract Maximum Likelihood (ML) and two-stage estimation methods will be compared for the Amemiya (1974) and the Nelson and Olson (1978) specifications of the Tobit-system. The two-stage method proposed for the Amemiya specification has poor properties, however, for the Nelson and Olsen specification it performs better than the ML-estimator.

Effects of taxes on non-market work: The swedish case

Abstract It is often assumed that high marginal taxes imply less work on the market and more work outside the market. A large amount of research has been done studying the effects of taxes on labor supply, but the effects on work outside the market are hardly known. Here we use information from a Swedish survey about households market and non-market activities and estimate the effects of marginal taxes as well as other socioeconomic variables on the amount of repair and maintenance activities performed. According to our results there is no positive effect of the marginal tax rate on home production. For females, we even find a significant negative correlation between repair work and marginal taxes.