Married with Children: A Collective Labor Supply Model with Detailed Time Use and Intrahousehold Expenditure Information

We propose a collective labor supply model with household production that generalizes an original model of Blundell, Chiappori and Meghir (2005). In our model, adults' individual preferences do not only depend on own leisure and individual private consumption of market goods. They also depend on the con- sumption of domestic goods, which are produced by combining goods bought at the market with individuals' time. We apply our model to new and unique data on Dutch couples with children. The data contains detailed information about the spouses' time use and the intrahousehold allocation of all expendi- tures. Our application uses a novel estimation strategy that builds upon the familiar two-stage allocation representation of the collective model. We obtain interesting (and plausible) empirical results. Spouses' preferences depend on the consumption of domestically produced goods (including children's welfare). Next, Pareto weights depend on variables like the individual wages and the share in the households nonlabor income. Finally, and perhaps surprisingly, we do not find evidence that mothers care more for their children than fathers.collective model;labor supply;time use;public goods;household production

Opening the Black Box of Intra-Household Decision-Making: Theory and Non-Parametric Empirical Tests of General Collective Consumption Models

We non-parametrically test a general collective consumption model with public consumption and externalities inside the household.We further propose a novel approach to model special cases of the general collective model.These special cases include alternative restrictions on the 'sharing rule' that applies to each household, and which defines the distribution of the household budget over the household members.A limiting case is the unitary model.Our application uses data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS); the panel structure of this data set allows non-parametric testing of the behavioral models without relying on preference homogeneity assumptions across similar individuals.This application includes test results but also a power analysis for different specifications of the collective consumption model.Our main findings are that the most general collective model, together with a large class of special but still fairly general cases, cannot be rejected by the data, while other restricted versions of the general model, including the unitary alternative, are rejected.Since these tests are entirely non-parametric, this provides strong evidence in favor of models focusing on intra-household decisionmaking.collective household models;intra-household allocation;revealed pref- erences;non-parametric analysis

The Revealed Preference Approach to Collective Consumption Behavior: Nonparametric Testing and Sharing Rule Recovery (Revised version of CentER DP 2007-73)

We present a nonparametric 'revealed preference' methodology for empiri- cally analyzing collective consumption behavior. First, we introduce an integer programming (IP) methodology for testing data consistency with collective con- sumption models that account for publicly as well as privately consumed goods. This IP methodology can include information on 'assignable quantities' for pri- vate goods. Next, we show that the IP methodology allows for recovering the personalized (Lindahl) prices for the public goods and the personalized quan- tities for the private goods. In turn, this implies recovery of the sharing rule (i.e. personalized income share levels). Numerical examples and an empirical application demonstrate the practical usefulness of the methodology.collective model;revealed preferences;data consistency tests;re- covery;integer programming;sharing rule

The Agents-are-Substitutes Property in Continuous Generalized Assignment Problems

The VCG mechanism has some nice properties if the agents-are-substitutes property holds.For example, for combinatorial auctions the property assures that the VCG mechanism is supported by a pricing equilibrium. The existence of such a pricing equilibrium is a necessary condition for the existence of ascending auctions that are equivalent to the VCG mechanism.Although it is known that the agents-are-substitutes property is important in several settings few problems or subclasses of problems are proven to have the property.In this paper we show for a class of problems that the agents-are-substitutes property holds. Moreover we give two rather natural and small extensions that do not have this property in general.Furthermore we show that in our simple problem class we need the possibility of price discrimination.operations research and management science;

Discharge estimation in a backwater affected meandering river

Variable effects of backwaters complicate the development of rating curves at hydrometric measurement stations. In areas influenced by backwater, single-parameter rating curve techniques are often inapplicable. To overcome this, several authors have advocated the use of an additional downstream level gauge to estimate the longitudinal surface level gradient, but this is cumbersome in a lowland meandering river with considerable transverse surface level gradients. Recent developments allow river flow to be continuously monitored through velocity measurements with an acoustic Doppler current profiler (H-ADCP), deployed horizontally at a river bank. This approach was adopted to obtain continuous discharge estimates at a cross-section in the River Mahakam at a station located about 300 km upstream of the river mouth in the Mahakam delta. The discharge station represents an area influenced by variable backwater effects from lakes, tributaries and floodplain ponds, and by tides. We applied both the standard index velocity method and a recently developed methodology to obtain a continuous time-series of discharge from the H-ADCP data. Measurements with a boat-mounted ADCP were used for calibration and validation of the model to translate H-ADCP velocity to discharge. As a comparison with conventional discharge estimation techniques, a stage-discharge relation using Jones formula was developed. The discharge rate at the station exceeded 3300 m3 s-1. Discharge series from a traditional stage-discharge relation did not capture the overall discharge dynamics, as inferred from H-ADCP data. For a specific river stage, the discharge range could be as high as 2000 m3 s-1, which is far beyond what could be explained from kinematic wave dynamics. Backwater effects from lakes were shown to be significant, whereas the river-tide interaction may impact discharge variation in the fortnightly frequency band. Fortnightly tides cannot easily be isolated from river discharge variation, which features similar periodicitie

Continuous measurements of discharge from a horizontal acoustic Doppler current profiler in a tidal river

Acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) can be mounted horizontally at a river bank, yielding single-depth horizontal array observations of velocity across the river. This paper presents a semideterministic, semistochastic method to obtain continuous measurements of discharge from horizontal ADCP (HADCP) data in a tidal river. In the deterministic part, single-depth velocity data are converted to specific discharge by applying the law of the wall, which requires knowledge of local values of the bed roughness length (z0). A new filtration technique was developed to infer cross-river profiles of z0 from moving boat ADCP measurements. Width-averaged values of z0 were shown to be predominantly constant in time but differed between ebb and flood. In the stochastic part of the method, specific discharge was converted to total discharge on the basis of a model that accounts for the time lag between flow variation in the central part of the river and flow variation near the banks. Model coefficients were derived using moving boat ADCP data. The consistency of mutually independent discharge estimates from HADCP measurements was investigated to validate the method, analyzing river discharge and tidal discharge separately. Inaccuracy of the method is attributed primarily to mechanisms controlling transverse exchange of momentum, which produce temporal variation in the discharge distribution over the cross section. Specifically, development of river dunes may influence the portion of the discharge concentrated within the range of the HADC

Aggregation without the Aggravation? Nonparametric Analysis of the Representative Consumer

Abstract: In the tradition of Afriat (1967), Diewert (1973) and Varian (1982), we provide a revealed preference characterisation of the representative consumer. Our results are simple and complement those of Gorman (1953, 1961), Samuelson (1956) and others. They can also be applied to data very readily and without the need for auxilliary parametric or statistical assumptions. We investigate the application of our characterisation by means of a balanced microdata panel survey. Our findings provide robust evidence against the existence of a representative consumer for our data.revealed preference;aggregation;Gorman Polar Form;GARP

Nonparametric Tests of Collectively Rational Consumption Behavior: An Integer Programming Procedure

We present an IP-based nonparametric (revealed preference) testing proce- dure for rational consumption behavior in terms of general collective models, which include consumption externalities and public consumption. An empiri- cal application to data drawn from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) demonstrates the practical usefulness of the procedure. Finally, we present extensions of the testing procedure to evaluate the goodness-of-fit of the collective model subject to testing, and to quantify and improve the power of the corresponding collective rationality tests.collective consumption model;revealed preferences;nonparametric rationality tests;integer programming (IP)

The AMC Linear Disability Score in patients with newly diagnosed Parkinson disease

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the clinimetric properties of the AMC Linear Disability Score (ALDS), a new generic disability measure based on Item Response Theory, in patients with newly diagnosed Parkinson disease (PD).\ud \ud Methods: A sample of 132 patients with PD was evaluated using the Hoehn and Yahr (H&Y), the Unified PD Rating Scale motor examination, the Schwab and England scale (S&E), the Short Form–36, the PD Quality of Life Questionnaire, and the ALDS.\ud \ud Results: The internal consistency reliability of the ALDS was good ([alpha] = 0.95) with 55 items extending the sufficient item-total correlation criterion (r > 0.20). The ALDS was correlated with other disability measures (r = 0.50 to 0.63) and decreasingly associated with measures reflecting impairments (r = 0.36 to 0.37) and mental health (r = 0.23 to -0.01). With regard to know-group validity, the ALDS indicated that patients with more severe PD (H&Y stage 3) were more disabled than patients with mild (H&Y stage 1) or moderate PD (H&Y stage 2) (p < 0.0001). The ALDS discriminated between more or less severe extrapyramidal symptoms (p = 0.001) and patients with postural instability showed lower ALDS scores compared to patients without postural instability (p = < 0.0001). Compared to the S&E (score 100% = 19%), the ALDS showed less of a ceiling effect (5%).\ud \ud Conclusion: The AMC Linear Disability Score is a flexible, feasible, and clinimetrically promising instrument to assess the level of disability in patients with newly diagnosed Parkinson disease