IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/miceco/v5y2017i1p53-83.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Efficiency of Family Bargaining Models with Renegotiation: The Role of Transferable Utility across Periods

Author

Listed:
  • Elisabeth Gugl
  • Linda Welling

Abstract

In dynamic family bargaining models, it is often assumed, for simplicity, that spouses have transferable utility as well as identical and constant marginal rates of intertemporal substitution. It has been argued that as long as spouses are at an interior solution, renegotiation does not hinder efficiency. We show that identical and constant marginal rates of intertemporal substitution (i.e., transferable utility across periods) are the source of this efficiency result. Even at an interior solution, renegotiation can cause inefficiency if marginal rates of intertemporal substitution are not constant. Our model is the first to both identify this source of inefficiency in a bargaining model in which the threatpoints of later periods are determined endogenously and demonstrate that there is no one-size-fits-all policy regulating divorce that can restore efficiency when couples are allowed to differ in their initial wage rates and/or preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Elisabeth Gugl & Linda Welling, 2017. "Efficiency of Family Bargaining Models with Renegotiation: The Role of Transferable Utility across Periods," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 5(1), pages 53-83, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:miceco:v:5:y:2017:i:1:p:53-83
    DOI: 10.1177/2321022217696152
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2321022217696152
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2321022217696152?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gugl, Elisabeth & Leroux, Justin, 2011. "Share the gain, share the pain? Almost transferable utility, changes in production possibilities, and bargaining solutions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 133-143.
    2. Rainer, Helmut, 2007. "Should we write prenuptial contracts?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 337-363, February.
    3. Meier, Volker & Rainer, Helmut, 2015. "Pigou meets Ramsey: Gender-based taxation with non-cooperative couples," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 28-46.
    4. Aura, Saku, 2005. "Does the balance of power within a family matter? The case of the Retirement Equity Act," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(9-10), pages 1699-1717, September.
    5. Alberto Alesina & Andrea Ichino & Loukas Karabarbounis, 2011. "Gender-Based Taxation and the Division of Family Chores," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 1-40, May.
    6. Manser, Marilyn & Brown, Murray, 1980. "Marriage and Household Decision-Making: A Bargaining Analysis," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 21(1), pages 31-44, February.
    7. Apps, Patricia & Rees, Ray, 1999. "On the taxation of trade within and between households," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 241-263, August.
    8. Saku Aura, 2002. "Uncommitted Couples: Some Efficiency and Policy Implications of Marital Bargaining," CESifo Working Paper Series 801, CESifo.
    9. Chiappori, Pierre-André & Iyigun, Murat & Weiss, Yoram, 2007. "Public Goods, Transferable Utility and Divorce Laws," IZA Discussion Papers 2646, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Matthias Wrede, 2003. "The Income Splitting Method: Is it Good for Both Marriage Partners?," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 4(2), pages 203-216, May.
    11. Alexander Kemnitz & Marcel Thum, 2015. "Gender Power, Fertility, and Family Policy," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 117(1), pages 220-247, January.
    12. Kaushik Basu, 2006. "Gender and Say: a Model of Household Behaviour with Endogenously Determined Balance of Power," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(511), pages 558-580, April.
    13. Maurizio Mazzocco, 2007. "Household Intertemporal Behaviour: A Collective Characterization and a Test of Commitment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 857-895.
    14. Chiappori, Pierre-Andre, 2010. "Testable implications of transferable utility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 1302-1317, May.
    15. Browning,Martin & Chiappori,Pierre-André & Weiss,Yoram, 2014. "Economics of the Family," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521795395, January.
    16. Matthias Fahn & Ray Rees, 2011. "Household Relational Contracts for Marriage, Fertility and Divorce," CESifo Working Paper Series 3655, CESifo.
    17. Echevarria, Cristina & Merlo, Antonio, 1999. "Gender Differences in Education in a Dynamic Household Bargaining Model," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 40(2), pages 265-286, May.
    18. Raphaela Hyee & Julio R. Robledo, 2009. "Specialization in the Bargaining Family," Working Papers 640, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    19. Pierre-Andre Chiappori & Bernard Fortin & Guy Lacroix, 2002. "Marriage Market, Divorce Legislation, and Household Labor Supply," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(1), pages 37-72, February.
    20. Shelly J. Lundberg & Robert A. Pollak & Terence J. Wales, 1997. "Do Husbands and Wives Pool Their Resources? Evidence from the United Kingdom Child Benefit," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(3), pages 463-480.
    21. Elisabeth Gugl & Linda Welling, 2012. "Time with sons and daughters," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 277-298, June.
    22. Raphaela Hyee & Julio R. Robledo, 2009. "Specialization in the Bargaining Family," Working Papers 640, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    23. Shelly Lundberg & Robert Pollak, 2003. "Efficiency in Marriage," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 153-167, September.
    24. Alessandro Cigno, 2012. "Marriage as a commitment device," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 193-213, June.
    25. McElroy, Marjorie B & Horney, Mary Jean, 1981. "Nash-Bargained Household Decisions: Toward a Generalization of the Theory of Demand," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 22(2), pages 333-349, June.
    26. Bergstrom, Theodore C, 1989. "A Fresh Look at the Rotten Kid Theorem--and Other Household Mysteries," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1138-1159, October.
    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. Elisabeth Gugl & Linda Welling, 2012. "Time with sons and daughters," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 277-298, June.

    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. Donni, Olivier & Molina, José Alberto, 2018. "Household Collective Models: Three Decades of Theoretical Contributions and Empirical Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 11915, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Elisabeth Gugl, 2009. "Income splitting, specialization, and intra‐family distribution," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(3), pages 1050-1071, August.
    3. Laurens CHERCHYE & Thomas DEMUYNCK & Bram DE ROCK, 2010. "Noncooperative household consumption with caring," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven ces10.34, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.
    4. Akira Yakita, 2018. "Fertility and education decisions and child-care policy effects in a Nash-bargaining family model," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(4), pages 1177-1201, October.
    5. Pierre André Chiappori & José Ignacio Gimenez Nadal & José Alberto Molina & Alexandros Theloudis & Jorge Velilla, 2020. "Intrahousehold Commitment and Intertemporal Labor Supply," LISER Working Paper Series 2020-11, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    6. Robert A. Pollak, 2019. "How Bargaining in Marriage Drives Marriage Market Equilibrium," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 297-321.
    7. Komura, Mizuki & Ogawa, Hikaru & Ogawa, Yoshitomo, 2019. "Optimal income taxation when couples have endogenous bargaining power," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 384-393.
    8. Walther, Selma, 2018. "Noncooperative decision making in the household: Evidence from Malawi," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 428-442.
    9. Chiappori, Pierre-André & Donni, Olivier, 2006. "Les modèles non unitaires de comportement du ménage : un survol de la littérature," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 82(1), pages 9-52, mars-juin.
    10. Doepke, Matthias & Kindermann, Fabian, 2014. "Intrahousehold Decision Making and Fertility," IZA Discussion Papers 8726, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Chiappori, Pierre-André & Molina, José Alberto & Gimenez-Nadal, José Ignacio & Velilla, Jorge, 2019. "Intertemporal Labor Supply and Intra-Household Commitment," IZA Discussion Papers 12353, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Robert A. Pollak, 2016. "Marriage Market Equilibrium," NBER Working Papers 22309, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Man Si, 2015. "Intrafamily bargaining and love," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 771-789, December.
    14. Matthias Doepke & Michèle Tertilt, 2019. "Does female empowerment promote economic development?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 309-343, December.
    15. Tümer Kapan, 2010. "Property Division Laws: The Effects on Labor Supply and Household Bargaining," 2010 Meeting Papers 1127, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    16. Alexander Kemnitz & Marcel Thum, 2015. "Gender Power, Fertility, and Family Policy," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 117(1), pages 220-247, January.
    17. Chiappori, Pierre-André & Iyigun, Murat & Weiss, Yoram, 2008. "An Assignment Model with Divorce and Remarriage," IZA Discussion Papers 3892, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Takuya Obara & Yoshitomo Ogawa, 2020. "Optimal Taxation in an Endogenous Fertility Model with Non-Cooperative Couples," Discussion Paper Series 211, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, revised Jan 2021.
    19. Molina, José Alberto & Gimenez-Nadal, José Ignacio & Velilla, Jorge, 2018. "Intertemporal Labor Supply: A Household Collective Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 11276, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. François Cochard & Hélène Couprie & Astrid Hopfensitz, 2016. "Do spouses cooperate? An experimental investigation," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 1-26, March.

    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:sae:miceco:v:5:y:2017:i:1:p:53-83. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.