Peter Kooreman

Weight-based pricing in the collection of household waste: the Oostzaan case

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effects of weight-based pricing in the collection of household waste. Using a comprehensive panel data set on all households in a Dutch municipality we estimate short-run as well as long-run price effects for the amounts of both compostable and non-recyclable household waste. We find significant and sizeable price effects, with the elasticity for compostable waste being four times as large as the elasticity for non-recyclable waste. Long-run elasticities are about 30% larger than short-run elasticities.

The economics of household behaviour

Introduction - The Neo-Classical Model and Some Extensions - Households versus Individual Economic Behaviour - Households in their Institutional and Social Setting - Household Labour Supply - Household Production and Leisure - Children and Household Expenditures - Dynamic Aspects of Household Formation and Dissolution - Dynamic Aspects of Household Consumption - Dynamic Aspects of Household Labour Supply - Investment in Human Capital and Intergenerational Transfers - Poverty, and the Distribution of Income, Welfare and Happiness - Appendix A Principles of Duration Models - Appendix B The Expected Present Value of Discounted Flows

Financial management, bargaining and efficiency within the household: an empirical analysis

This paper analyzes data from the British Household Panel Survey on households financial management and financial decision-making. Direct subjective information was collected by asking questions like ‘Who has the final say in big financial decisions?’. All questions were answered separately by both partners. We consider two competing models explaining how finances are organized. The first model is based on a household production approach, in which behaviour is determined by an efficient allocation of both partners time to market work, financial management, and leisure. In the second model, which is game-theoretic in nature, financial management is a reflection of bargaining power. The two models have different implications for the effect of explanatory variables, in particular wages, on the dependent variables. Empirical results indicate that financial management is primarily determined by bargaining considerations.

Free riding and the provision of candy bars

This paper uses Canadian data to study the relationship between sterilisation and the work careers of women. The study is motivated by the observation that childbearing and child rearing are the main reasons for the intermittency of womens ’work. Sterilisation may be correlated with a change in the labour market behaviour of women because it ends childbearing.There are three main findings. First, among women with children, sterilised women are more likely to work than non-sterilised women. Second,being sterilised is found to have a positive and significant effect on the earnings of women who had stopped working in the past but has an insignifican effect on the earnings of continuously employed women.Third,sterilised women and non-sterilised women do not differ in the probability that they had previously stopped working.However,among sterilised women who are currently working, most had experienced career interruptions that were initiated and completed before they became sterilised.

Household Labour Supply

In Chapter 2 we distinguished three kinds of time use: paid labour, household labour and leisure. Although these categories seem to be well-defined, it is still sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to determine which label should be attached to an activity. Even for the category paid labour it can be a point of debate. The time we need for travelling to and from our job: does it belong to the category paid labour? Unpaid overtime at work, do we consider these hours as hours spent on paid labour? The choices made in different research projects vary with the questions that are to be answered. Different choices can be made by researchers. The same kind of problem arises when the wage rate is used in economic research. Should we use the gross or net wage rate, the marginal or average rate, and how should we deal with income in kind? Again, choices have to be made and the reader should always be aware of those choices.

Individual discounting, energy conservation and household demand for lighting

This paper analyzes household appliance purchase and energy consumption and conservation related to demand for lighting. The behavioral model is estimated using data on consumers choices between various types of electric light bulbs with large differences in purchase costs, operating costs and lifetimes. The model allows the utility attached to energy conservation per se to vary across consumers and explicitly takes into account the random nature of the lifetimes of lamps. Due to the panel nature of the data and the differences between lifetimes of high-efficiency and low-efficiency lamps, the consumers discount rate can be estimated without assuming that he correctly perceive the operating costs. The estimated annual discount rate is about 15 percent, somewhat lower than most estimates is earlier studies.

A note on the energy-efficiency investments of an expected cost minimizer

This paper analyzes a consumers choice between a high-efficiency and a low-efficiency version of an energy-using durable when the expected lifetimes of the two versions differ. A (small) difference in expected lifetimes may induce entirely different implications for the behavior of a cost minimizing consumer, as compared to the case with equal expected lifetimes. The result supplements the explanations for the extremely high discount rates that have been reported for energy efficiency investments. We also provide sufficient conditions for the existence of a reservation property, both in the case of deterministic and of random lifetimes.

Household versus Individual Economic Behaviour

Traditionally, the economic theory of consumer demand has taken the individual as a unit of analysis. Empirical work on demand systems, on the other hand, is usually based on data that take the household as the unit for data collection. In this chapter we shall investigate this discrepancy between the theory and practice of demand analysis, and possibilities of narrowing the gap.

Poverty and the Distribution of Income, Welfare and Happiness

The extent of poverty and the distribution of income are important characteristics of the state of a society. Banishment of poverty and an ‘equitable’ income distribution are acclaimed policy purposes worldwide. The two concepts ‘poverty’ and ‘income distribution’ are closely related. Although poverty refers to a particular state of well-being, which has many more dimensions other than income, poverty research usually focuses on the income aspect of well-being. One reason is that redistribution of incomes, by means of income taxation and income transfers, is the primary instrument for policies aimed at relieving poverty.

Dynamic Aspects of Household Formation and Dissolution

Over the course of their life-cycle most individuals typically will make several transitions from one type of household to another. Although the range of possible biographies in terms of household membership is virtually unbounded, most people experience transitions out of the parental home; marriage; the birth of one or more children; and the dissolution of the marriage, either because of death or because of divorce.