IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedlrv/y2009inovp613-626nv.91no.6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Local price variation and labor supply behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Dan A. Black
  • Natalia A. Kolesnikova
  • Lowell J. Taylor

Abstract

In standard economic theory, labor supply decisions depend on the complete set of prices: wages and the prices of relevant consumption goods. Nonetheless, most theoretical and empirical work in labor supply studies ignore prices other than wages. We address the question of whether the common practice of ignoring local price variation in labor supply studies is as innocuous as generally assumed. We describe a simple model to demonstrate that the effects of wage and nonlabor income on labor supply typically differ by location. In particular, we show that the derivative of the labor supply with respect to nonlabor income is independent of price only when the labor supply takes a form based on an implausible separability condition. Empirical evidence demonstrates that the effect of price on labor supply is not a simple \\"up-or-down shift\\" that would be required to meet the separability condition in our key proposition.

Suggested Citation

  • Dan A. Black & Natalia A. Kolesnikova & Lowell J. Taylor, 2009. "Local price variation and labor supply behavior," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 91(Nov), pages 613-626.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:y:2009:i:nov:p:613-626:n:v.91no.6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/09/11/Black.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Orley Ashenfelter & William J. Collins & Albert Yoon, 2006. "Evaluating the Role of Brown v. Board of Education in School Equalization, Desegregation, and the Income of African Americans," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 8(2), pages 213-248.
    2. Killingsworth, Mark R. & Heckman, James J., 1987. "Female labor supply: A survey," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 103-204, Elsevier.
    3. Blundell, Richard & Macurdy, Thomas, 1999. "Labor supply: A review of alternative approaches," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 27, pages 1559-1695, Elsevier.
    4. Donald R. Haurin, 1980. "The Regional Distribution of Population, Migration, and Climate," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 95(2), pages 293-308.
    5. Stuart A. Gabriel & Stuart S. Rosenthal, 2004. "Quality of the Business Environment Versus Quality of Life: Do Firms and Households Like the Same Cities?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 438-444, February.
    6. Michael Abbott & Orley Ashenfelter, 1976. "Labour Supply, Commodity Demand and the Allocation of Time," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 43(3), pages 389-411.
    7. Chen, Yong & Rosenthal, Stuart S., 2008. "Local amenities and life-cycle migration: Do people move for jobs or fun?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 519-537, November.
    8. Ashenfelter, Orley & Ham, John, 1979. "Education, Unemployment, and Earnings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 99-116, October.
    9. Roback, Jennifer, 1982. "Wages, Rents, and the Quality of Life," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(6), pages 1257-1278, December.
    10. Pencavel, John, 1987. "Labor supply of men: A survey," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 3-102, Elsevier.
    11. repec:pri:indrel:dsp01fb494841t is not listed on IDEAS
    12. repec:eee:labchp:v:1:y:1986:i:c:p:103-204 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Campus, Daniela & Giannelli, Gianna Claudia, 2016. "Is the Allocation of Time Gender Sensitive to Food Price Changes? An Investigation of Hours of Work in Uganda," IZA Discussion Papers 10376, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. John V. Winters, 2013. "Human capital externalities and employment differences across metropolitan areas of the USA," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(5), pages 799-822, September.
    3. Black, Dan A. & Kolesnikova, Natalia & Taylor, Lowell J., 2014. "Why do so few women work in New York (and so many in Minneapolis)? Labor supply of married women across US cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 59-71.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jordan Rappaport, 2006. "Consumption amenities and city crowdedness," Research Working Paper RWP 06-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    2. Philip Trostel & Ian Walker, 2006. "Education and Work," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(4), pages 377-399.
    3. Rappaport, Jordan, 2008. "Consumption amenities and city population density," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 533-552, November.
    4. Dan Black & Natalia Kolesnikova & Lowell Taylor, 2009. "Earnings Functions When Wages and Prices Vary by Location," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 21-47, January.
    5. Blundell, Richard & Macurdy, Thomas, 1999. "Labor supply: A review of alternative approaches," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 27, pages 1559-1695, Elsevier.
    6. Hanson, Kenneth & Somwaru, Agapi, 2003. "Distributional Effects of U.S. Farm Commodity Programs: Accounting for Farm and Non-Farm Households," Conference papers 331120, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    7. David Albouy & Fernando Leibovici & Casey Warman, 2013. "Quality of life, firm productivity, and the value of amenities across Canadian cities," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(2), pages 379-411, May.
    8. Bieri, David S. & Kuminoff, Nicolai V. & Pope, Jaren C., 2023. "National expenditures on local amenities," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    9. Kristoffer Moeller, 2018. "Culturally clustered or in the cloud? How amenities drive firm location decision in Berlin," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 728-758, September.
    10. Davidsson, Michael & Cortes, Bienvenido, 2017. "The Role of the Housing Supply and the Regulatory Environment in Economic Growth of Micropolitan Statistical Areas," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 47(1).
    11. Deniz Nebioglu & Ayca Ebru Giritligil, 2018. "Wealth Effects and Labor Supply: An Experimental Study," BELIS Working Papers 2018-01, BELIS, Istanbul Bilgi University.
    12. Fredrik Carlsen & Stefan Leknes, 2022. "For whom are cities good places to live?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(12), pages 2177-2190, December.
    13. Claudia Olivetti, 2006. "Changes in Women's Hours of Market Work: The Role of Returns to Experience," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(4), pages 557-587, October.
    14. Matthias Wrede, 2015. "Wages, Rents, Unemployment, And The Quality Of Life: A Consistent Theory‐Based Measure," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(4), pages 609-625, September.
    15. Dan S. Rickman, 2014. "Assessing Regional Quality of Life: A Call for Action in Regional Science," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 44(1), pages 1-12, Spring.
    16. Yan Song & Jiang Zhou & Yingjie Zhang & Dingxin Wu & Honghai Xu, 2022. "How Much Are Amenities Worth? An Empirical Study on Urban Land and Housing Price Differentials across Chinese Cities," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-16, June.
    17. Donovan, Stuart & de Graaff, Thomas & de Groot, Henri L.F. & Schiff, Aaron, 2024. "An urban overhead? Crime, agglomeration, and amenity," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    18. Bernd Fitzenberger & Reinhold Schnabel & Gaby Wunderlich, 2004. "The gender gap in labor market participation and employment: A cohort analysis for West Germany," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 17(1), pages 83-116, February.
    19. Adam Looney & Monica Singhal, 2005. "The effect of anticipated tax changes on intertemporal labor supply and the realization of taxable income," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-44, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    20. Albouy, David & Lue, Bert, 2015. "Driving to opportunity: Local rents, wages, commuting, and sub-metropolitan quality of life," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 74-92.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Price levels; Labor supply;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:y:2009:i:nov:p:613-626:n:v.91no.6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Scott St. Louis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.