Martina Menon

The Sharing Rule: Where Is It?

The search for a robust and stable sharing rule has led us to novel results about identification of the rule governing the intra-household allocation of resources. We introduce an income proportionality property that directly connects distribution factors with individual incomes and implement this identifying condition to obtain an exact correspondence between the structural and reduced form of the adopted collective demand equations. The paper first reexamines the collective model of household consumption and shows that a) the collective model as traditionally developed is not identified, b) illustrates the novel income proportionality condition, and c) derives a restriction allowing full identification. In the tradition of collective theory, we exploit information about private consumption of an assignable good, clothing for adults and children in our application, prices and distribution factor variation to estimate how resources are shared between adults and children in a sample of Italian households. Previous estimations of collective models where only limited to either the direct or indirect estimation of the structure. Our results open up the possibility of a direct structural estimation of a collective system of demand equations, and associated individual Engel curves, as easily as estimating a demand system based on a unitary framework.

The Collective Farm-Household Model: Policy and Welfare Simulations

Abstract This study develops a household enterprise model extended to encompass recent advances in collective theory. We use a simulation model in which production and consumption‐leisure choices are represented along with the rule governing intra‐household resource allocation, to analyze the income and wage responses of each family member. The household is treated as an equilibrium model whose accounts are based on a collective household accounting matrix, with the social dimension being the wife/husband classes. The simulation analysis illustrates the policy relevance of the collective approach to household behavior for inferring the impact of economic policies on individual behavior and welfare. We also propose insightful comparisons with the unitary model to make the behavioral and welfare policy relevance of the collective approach evident.

A Characterization of Collective Individual Expenditure Functions

We examine the properties ensuring that individual expenditure functions, derived within the context of the collective household model, are legitimate individual cost functions. Our curvature results are important for the characterization of collective demand functions as well and for the measurement of inequality within the household.

A Field Study on University Enrolment: The Intentions of Prospective Students

We study the university choice of prospective students using a unique dataset enriched with “lab-in-the-field” experiments aimed at eliciting risk and time preferences of students. Controlling for assortative mating, we find that fathers rather than mothers education is significantly associated with the likelihood of childrens enrolment in university indicating that the intergenerational transmission of human capital is mainly channelled through the fathers education. Family possessions, as measured by homeownership, are positively associated with the likelihood of childrens enrolment, while parental income has a small impact on this choice. This result suggests that in our sample there is equal access to university irrespective of short-time family liquidity constraints. We also find that economic preference parameters, such as risk and time preferences, account for a small part of the prospect of enrolling in university, while subjective expectations, effort and school ability of children are strong predictors of future schooling investment. In addition, through a counterfactual analysis, sports activities among children appear to increase the university enrolment rate. Our findings provide helpful directions for decision-makers to attract talented students to tertiary education.

Centralized and Decentralized Demand in Collective Household Models

We investigate the relationship between centralized and decentralized collective demand models applied to consumption within a household with multiple individuals. The centralized program is described by a Bergsonian representation of the household utility function and a household budget constraint, while the decentralized program is described by individual utility maximization subject to an income allocation among individual. The household income allocation among individuals involves an income sharing rule. We show that, in general, income shares are equal to the product of two weights: the Bergsonian weight and a weight reflecting income effects across individuals. We also show that the latter weights play a role in income sharing and in household welfare evaluation when individual preferences depart from quasi-homotheticity. We also examine how individual preferences affect the relationship between centralized and decentralized demand.

Preferences for Social Inclusion: Empirical Evidence from Juvenile Rehabilitation in Italy

Social inclusion is a multidimensional phenomenon that involves social, psychological, political, and economic aspects of individuals’ life. While social inclusion is a priority of the European Agenda 2020, little is known about individuals’ preferences for social inclusion and their determinants. We investigate factors affecting preferences for social inclusion using a stated preference survey on juvenile rehabilitation. We show that ideological inclinations, concerns about crime, and altruistic motives play a significant role in explaining preferences for the social inclusion of juvenile offenders.