Labor Supply and the Demand for Child Care: An Intertemporal Approach

In this paper, we present a model of a one parent–one child household where parental decisions on labor supply, leisure, and the demand for private and public child care are simultaneously endogenized and intertemporally determined. We characterize the path of the optimal decisions and investigate the impact of various public child care fees and of the quality of public child care services on the parent’s time allocation and the child’s performance level. Our results show that different public child care policies may induce substantially diverging effects, and reveal that each policy frequently faces a trade off between an encouragement of labor supply and an enhancement of the child’s performance.child care fees and services, demand for child care, intertemporal optimization, labor supply, leisure, parental time allocation, private and public child care, public child care policy

Labor Markets and Capital Tax Competition

Ogawa et al. (2006) analyze capital tax competition in a fixed-wage approach and show that the original results of Zodrow and Mieszkowski (1986) are not preserved in the presence of unemployment. In the present paper we challenge this view and investigate capital tax competition for some arbitrary institutional setting of the labor market. We find that if the labor market is characterized by some efficient bargaining solution, the results of Zodrow and Mieszkowski (1986) are preserved.capital tax competition, unemployment, efficient bargains

Tax-Competition with Involuntary Unemployment

In the present paper we extend the classical tax-competition framework of Zodrow and Mieszkowski (1986) by modelling involuntary unemployment and by allowing for labour taxation as a second source of public funds. For a large class of production functions (including CES), it turns out that tax competition is characterized by underprovision of public goods, and by positive taxes on both labour and capital. We thus conclude that the results of Zodrow and Mieszkowski survive some important and substantial modifications of the framework, and are thus more general than recently suggested elsewhere.tax competition, capital and labour taxation, involuntary unemployment, efficient bargains

Labour unions: to unite or to separate?

In this paper we investigate trade union formation. To this end we apply a model with two types of labour where the interests of both groups of labourers are represented by either a joint (industry) labour union or by two independent group-specific (professional) labour unions. We investigate whether, and if so, under which conditions, it is beneficial for at least one group of labourers to form its own independent union; or whether it is in the interest of both groups to have a joint industry labour union. Applying the (asymmetric) Nash bargaining solution, we find that under reasonable conditions, it is beneficial for at least one group of labourers to form its own independent labour union. In this case a joint union must be considered as an unstable institution. The profit share, however, is always higher if the firm bargains with a joint labour union. This explains why employers vehemently oppose recent split offs of specialized labour groups from existing industry unions and from tariff unions

Labour Unions – To Unite or to Separate?

In this paper we investigate trade union formation. To this end we apply a model with two types of labour where the interests of both groups of labourers are represented by either a joint (industry) labour union or by two independent group-specific (professional) labour unions. We investigate whether, and if so, under which conditions, it is beneficial for at least one group of labourers to form its own independent union; or whether it is in the interest of both groups to have a joint industry labour union. Applying the (asymmetric) Nash bargaining solution, we find that under reasonable conditions, it is beneficial for at least one group of labourers to form its own independent labour union. In this case a joint union must be considered as an unstable institution. The profit share, however, is always higher if the firm bargains with a joint labour union. This explains why employers vehemently oppose recent split offs of specialized labour groups from existing industry unions and from tariff unions.trade-union formation, wage-employment bargains, Nash bargaining solution, industry and professional labour unions, trade union merger

Price Effects on Compound Commodities

We explore effects of simultaneous price changes for the demand of a group of goods, which we refer to as a compound commodity. Specifically, we consider unit and proportional cost components (e. g., taxes, transportation costs, etc.) imposed on the compound commodity. We find that there is a serious aggregation problem implying that the property of a downward-sloping demand curve does not generally hold for the demand of a compound commodity. Notably, both substitution effects of the unit cost and of the proportional cost for a compound commodity may be unambiguously opposed. Finally, we apply these results to commodity taxation

Optimal Fishery with Coastal Catch

In many spatial resource models it is assumed that the agent is able to determine the harvesting activity over the complete spatial domain. However, agents frequently have only access to a resource at particular locations at which the moving biomass, such as fish or game, may be caught or hunted. To analyse this problem, we set up a simple optimal control model of boundary harvesting. Using the Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle we derive the associated canonical system, and numerically compute canonical steady states and optimal time dependent paths, and characterise the optimal control and the associated stock of the resource. Finally, we extend our model to a predator-prey model of the Lotka-Volterra type, and show how the presence of two species enriches the results of our basic model. For both models we illustrate the dependence of the optimal steady states and the optimal paths on the cost parameters

Harvesting a Remote Renewable Resource

In standard models of spatial harvesting, the resource is distributed over the complete domain and the agent is able to control the harvesting activity everywhere. In some cases, it is more realistic to assume that the resource is located at a single point and that the agent is required to travel. The agent faces a combined travelling–and–harvesting problem. We scrutinize this two-stage optimal control problem and characterise the optimal policy of the full travelling–and–harvesting problem

Labor supply and the demand for child care: an intertemporal approach

In this paper, we present a model of a one parent one child household where parental decisions on labor supply, leisure, and the demand for private and public child care are simultaneously endogenized and intertemporally determined. We characterize the path of the optimal decisions and investigate the impact of various public child care fees and of the quality of public child care services on the parent's time allocation and the child's performance level. Our results show that different public child care policies may induce substantially diverging effects, and reveal that each policy frequently faces a trade off between an encouragement of labor supply and an enhancement of the child's performance

Centralised Labour Market Negotiations

This paper contributes to the analysis of central vs. decentral (firm-level) labour market negotiations. We argue that during negotiations on a central scale employers and employees plausibly take output market effects into account, while they behave competitively during firm-level negotiations. Assuming that in both cases the labour market conflict is settled efficiently according to the familiar Nash bargaining solution, we show that central negotiations lead to a lower employment level but to a higher wage rate, when compared with local labour market bargains. While this is an important theoretical result in its own, it has important effects for both empirical labour market research and labour market policies. Also, this result counters the critique that efficient negotiations result in employment levels exceeding the competitive level