Homework in Labor Economics: Household Production and Intertemporal Substitution

We argue that estimates of intertemporal substitution elasticities obtained from standard life cycle models are subject to a downward bias because they neglect changes in work done at home over the life cycle. We extend the standard life cycle model to include home production and estimate it using data from three time use surveys. We find that the downward bias is large.

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Paper Number
97-016
Year
1997