Intra-household Work Time Synchronization

If partners derive utility from joint leisure time, it is expected that they will coordinate their work schedules in order to increase the amount of joint leisure time. This paper tries to answer three questions using a new matching procedure where couples are matched to other couples. (1) Do partners coordinate their work schedules and does this result in work time synchronization, (2) which partners synchronize more work hours, and (3) is there a preference for togetherness. We find that (1) coordination results in more synchronized work hours. (2) the presence of children is the main cause why some partners synchronize their work times less than other couples, and (3) partners coordinate their work schedules in order to have more joint leisure time, which is evidence for togetherness preferences.

The influence of work time adjustment on joint activities and the demand for child care

In this paper we examine if partners in households coordinate their working times. Also we examine how this coordination influences the (in)formal demand for child care and the time spent on joint activities. The activities that we distinguish are the time that partners spent together, spent jointly on household tasks and spent jointly on child care. We find that partners de-synchronize their work times when there are children present in the household while they synchronize their work times when there are no children present in the household. Households where women are higher educated tend to synchronize there work times. Partners who synchronize their work times spent more joint hours on household tasks. Partners who de-synchronize their work times less spent more time together. We do not find a relation between work timing and the time that parents spent together caring for their children. The demand for (in)formal child care is affected by the coordination of work schedules by partners. Partners who de-synchronize their work times more, demand less (in)formal child care. Moreover, active work time desynchronization and the demand for child care appear to be substitutes.Time Allocation; Work Timing; Work Hours; Leisure Time

Collective Labor Supply of Native Dutch and Immigrant Households in the Netherlands

We estimate a collective time allocation model, where Dutch, Surinamese/Antillean and Turkish households behave as if both spouses maximize a household utility function. We assume that paid labor and housework are the endogenous choice variables and furthermore consider household production. Surinamese/Antillean and Turkish women differ from Dutch women because they value (joint) household production more in their utility function. Surinamese/Antillean and Turkish men, on the other hand, value joint household production less then Dutch men. Turkish households are the more traditional households, in the sense that the woman is more oriented on household production, while the man is oriented on paid labor. It is often believed that the bargaining power of women in more traditional households is relatively low, but our estimation results do not support this idea. In general, the wage elasticities of Dutch, Turkish and Surinamese/Antillean households are comparable. Men and women replace housework hours by paid labor if their hourly wage rate increases but do the opposite when the hourly wage rate of the partner increases.collective model, labor supply, child care

A Public Good Version of the Collective Household Model: An Empirical Approach with an Application to British Household Data

In this paper we consider an empirical collective household model of time allocation for two-earner households. The novelty of this paper is that we estimate a version of the collective household model, where the internally produced goods and the externally purchased goods are assumed to be public. The empirical results suggest that: (1) Preferences of men and women differ; (2) Although there are significant individual variations, on average the utility functions of men and women are equally weighted in the household utility function; (3) Differences in the ratio of the partners' hourly wages are explanatory for how individual utilities are weighted in the household utility function. (4) The female's preference for household production is influenced by family size, but this does not hold for the male; (5) Both the male and the female have a backward-bending labor supply curve; (6) Labor-supply curves are forward-bending with respect to the partner's wage rate; (7) Our model rejects the unitary Slutsky symmetry condition.labor supply, collective household models, household behavior,

Intra-Household Work Timing: The Effect on Joint Activities and the Demand for Child Care

This study examines if couples time their work hours and how this work timing influences child care demand and the time that spouses jointly spend on leisure, household chores and child care. By using a innovative matching strategy, this studies identifies the timing of work hours that cannot be explained by factors other than the partners' potential to communicate on the timing of their work. The main findings are that couples with children create less overlap in their work times and this effect is more pronounced the younger the children. We find evidence for a togetherness preference of spouses, but only for childless couples. Work timing also influences the joint time that is spent on household chores, but the effect is small. Finally, work timing behavior affects the demand for informal child care, but not the demand for formal child care.labor supply, work timing, time allocation

Personalized Stopping Rules in Bayesian Adaptive Mastery Assessment

We propose a new model to assess the mastery level of a given skill efficiently. The model, called Bayesian Adaptive Mastery Assessment (BAMA), uses information on the accuracy and the response time of the answers given and infers the mastery at every step of the assessment. BAMA balances the length of the assessment and the certainty of the mastery inference by employing a Bayesian decision-theoretic framework adapted to each student. All these properties contribute to a novel approach in assessment models for intelligent learning systems. The purpose of this research is to explore the properties of BAMA and evaluate its performance concerning the number of questions administered and the accuracy of the final mastery estimates across different students. We simulate student performances and establish that the model converges with low variance and high efficiency leading to shorter assessment duration for all students. Considering the experimental results, we expect our approach to avoid the issue of over-practicing and under-practicing and facilitate the development of Learning Analytics tools to support the tutors in the evaluation of learning effects and instructional decision making.Comment: 12 page

Tracking patterns in self-regulated learning using students’ self-reports and online trace data

For decades, self-report instruments – which rely heavily on students’ perceptions and beliefs – have been the dominant way of measuring motivation and strategy use. An event-based measure based on online trace data arguably has the potential to remove analytical restrictions of self-report measures. The purpose of this study is therefore to triangulate constructs suggested in theory and measured using self-reported data with revealed online traces of learning behaviour. The results show that online trace data of learning behaviour are complementary to self-reports, as they explained a unique proportion of variance in student academic performance and reveal that self-reports explain more variance in online learning behaviour of prior weeks than variance in learning behaviour in succeeding weeks. Student motivation is, however, to a lesser extent captured with online trace data, likely because of its covert nature. In that respect, it is of importance to recognize the crucial role of self-reports in capturing student learning holistically. This manuscript is ‘frontline’ in the sense that event-based measurement methodologies using online trace data are relatively unexplored. The comparison with self-report data made in this manuscript sheds new light on the added value of innovative and traditional methods of measuring motivation and strategy use

The influence of work time adjustment on joint activities and the demand for child care

In this paper we examine if partners in households coordinate their working times. Also we examine how this coordination influences the (in)formal demand for child care and the time spent on joint activities. The activities that we distinguish are the time that partners spent together, spent jointly on household tasks and spent jointly on child care. We find that partners de-synchronize their work times when there are children present in the household while they synchronize their work times when there are no children present in the household. Households where women are higher educated tend to synchronize there work times. Partners who synchronize their work times spent more joint hours on household tasks. Partners who de-synchronize their work times less spent more time together. We do not find a relation between work timing and the time that parents spent together caring for their children. The demand for (in)formal child care is affected by the coordination of work schedules by partners. Partners who de-synchronize their work times more, demand less (in)formal child care. Moreover, active work time desynchronization and the demand for child care appear to be substitutes

The influence of work time adjustment on joint activities and the demand for child care

In this paper we examine if partners in households coordinate their working times. Also we examine how this coordination influences the (in)formal demand for child care and the time spent on joint activities. The activities that we distinguish are the time that partners spent together, spent jointly on household tasks and spent jointly on child care. We find that partners de-synchronize their work times when there are children present in the household while they synchronize their work times when there are no children present in the household. Households where women are higher educated tend to synchronize there work times. Partners who synchronize their work times spent more joint hours on household tasks. Partners who de-synchronize their work times less spent more time together. We do not find a relation between work timing and the time that parents spent together caring for their children. The demand for (in)formal child care is affected by the coordination of work schedules by partners. Partners who de-synchronize their work times more, demand less (in)formal child care. Moreover, active work time desynchronization and the demand for child care appear to be substitutes