THE SPANISH SHARING RULE

In this paper we estimate the intrahousehold distribution of household's private expenditures between men and women (the sharing rule) in two types of Spanish households: those in which the woman works and those in which the woman does not work. The results for working women are parallel to those obtained for other countries which indicate a proportionally higher transfer from the woman to the man than from the man to the woman, such that the proportion of the woman's share decreases both with the woman?s wage and with the man's wage. However, in households where the woman does not work, we observe a slight increase in the proportion of the woman's share when the man's wage increases.Collective model, Intrahousehold allocation, Woman¿s

DOES FEMALE PARTICIPATION AFFECT THE SHARING RULE?

Using Spanish data I test whether there is a different pattern of intra-household distribution between two types of families: on the one hand, families with both spouses in full time employment and, on the other hand, families with the husband in full time employment and the wife being outside the labor market. Significant differences are found in such a pattern and some of its features are identified and estimated.collective model, sharing rule, female participation, Engel curve

Female Labor Participation and the Allocation of Household Expenditure. Evidence on Spanish Data

We study the influence of the female labor participation in the household expenditure allocation, considering the joint decision between consumption and leisure. The theoretical framework is a collective model in which the agents are the man and the woman and it is assumed that the result of their decisions is Pareto-efficient. The change in expenditure-elasticities depending on the female labor participation allows us to classify goods as complements (substitutes) of the woman's leisure if the elasticity is lower (higher) if the woman works than if she does not work. The sign of the effect of individual labor incomes on consumption allows us to classify goods in two spheres: the masculine sphere if the power of the man increases the consumption of the good and the feminine sphere in the contrary case.collective model, female participation, leisure complements, leidure substitutes

A NEW DISCUSSION OF THE HUMAN CAPITAL THEORY IN THE METHODOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH PROGRAMMES

This paper formally describes the Human Capital Theory as a Research Programme that fits into the classical economic Research Programmes. The fundamental ¿hard core¿ assumption which converts the Human Capital Theory into a Research Programme itself in Lakatosian terms is based upon the embodiment of the human capital in the person investing in it. The paper shows how the auxiliary ¿protective belt¿ assumptions and the empirical content of the theory are linked to and derived from the ¿hard core¿ assumptions in such a way that the Human Capital Theory satisfies the conditions to be considered a Scientific Research Programme.Lakatos, Research Programme, Human Capital.

“Rationality in the Joint Allocation of Private and Public Goods”.

In this study we assume that household demand for private and public goods are the e¢cient outcomes of the household decission process. From the efcient assumption we derive testable properties of these demands and we identify some characteristics of the intrahousehold distribution of the household expenditure. These results extend Chiappori (1988) main results to the case of joint consumption of private and public goods.Household behavior, Collective Model, Identification, Testing

Primary Education in India: Prospects of meeting the MDG Target

This paper uses two large repeated cross-sections, one for the early 1990’s, and one for the late 1990’s, to describe growth in school enrolment and completion rates for boys and girls in India, and to explore the extent to which enrolment and completion rates have grown over time. It decomposes this growth into components due to change in the characteristics that determine schooling, and another associated with changes in the responsiveness of schooling to given characteristics. Our results caution against the common practice of using current data to make future projections on the assumption that the model parameters are stable. The analysis nevertheless performs illustrative simulations relevant to the question of whether India will be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of realising universal primary education by the year 2015. The simulations suggest that India will achieve universal attendance, but that primary school completion rates will not exhibit much progress.Millennium Development Goals, primary schooling, attendance, completion rates, gender, India, decomposition

Nature, nurture and market conditions: Ability and education in the policy evaluation approach

The present paper follows the rationality of the Human Capital Theory to explain the heterogeneity of returns to schooling in a policy evaluation model with the purpose of testing whether people are blocked in any way (credit constraints, uncertainty or other market environment conditions) when they make their schooling choices. The minimal assumption that abler people face lower costs of schooling guarantees the possibility of making the right choice in this framework. The empirical implications of the model are extended further from the properties of ordinary least squares and instrumental variable estimators and centred on predictions about the sign of different policy evaluation parameters (sorting gains and selection biases) and on the shape and variability of marginal returns to education. Within this framework, the paper revises the modern empirical literature on returns to schooling in combination with the theoretical literature on human capital. Empirical evidence for the U.S., shown by a binary choice model, supports the assumption. Evidence obtained from Spanish data in a sequential choice setting does not support the assumption.Ability gap, schooling, selection models, heterogeneity

Rationality in the joint allocation of private and public goods.

This paper presents an extension of "collective models" that rationalize household demands as efficient allocations, allowing for the joint allocation of public and private goods. Starting from the problem of efficiency, and adding a separability assumption between public goods and exclusive private goods, we obtain two results. Firstly, we find some new restrictions upon the derivatives of the demand functions. Secondly, we predict how the sharing of household expenditures between the man and the woman changes when the exclusive good's prices changes, and we measure the effect of the consumption of public goods on this change.Collective choice; Public goods; Separability;

- IMPLEMENTATION OF OPTIMAL CONTRACTS UNDER ADVERSE SELECTION

This paper studies the principal-multiagent model of a firm subject to adverse selection. We focus on agents who have complete information. We propose some desirable properties to be satisfied by mechanisms implementing the first-best in Nash equilibrium: (i) enforceability (a property related with the individual rationality of the mechanism), (ii) renegotiation-proofness, (iii) small strategy spaces, (iv) unique implementation, (v) unique best-reply and (vi) no mixed strategies. We prove that enforceability is not compatible with renegotiation-proofness or the unique best-reply property. Then we propose two mechanisms. The first one satisfies properties (i), (ii) and (iv). The second mechanism verifies all properties but enforceability.adverse selection, contract theory, implementation theory

La participación laboral de la mujer y los bienes públicos en el marco de los modelos colectivos del hogar

Se aborda el estudio de las decisiones observables sobre la asignación del gasto del hogar con el fin de explorar la estructura implícita del proceso de decisión que tiene lugar en el seno del mismo. La estructura del comportamiento observable se espcifica mediante los sistemas de curvas Engel o los sistemas de demanda, teniendo en cuenta el efecto de la participación laboral de la mujer y de los ingresos laborales de la pareja. Se exploran las propiedades de las funciones de demanda derivadas de un marco teórico que tiene en cuenta las preferencias de los dos agentes que componen el hogar. Se responde a preguntas sobre la influencia del hombre y de la mujer en la asignación del gasto y sobre el reparto del gasto entre los dos agentes. Se estudia la asignación del gasto en los hogares españoles haciendo hincapié en el efecto de la participación laboral de la mujer. Se presentan las estructuras de los modelos de consumidor neoclásico y colectivo con el fin de justificar los valores empíricos y metodologías que nos han llevado a adoptar el modelo colectivo como marco teórico de este estudio de la asignación del gasto en los hogares españoles. La principal aportación es la consideración del efecto de la participación laboral de la mujer sobre el consumo de bienes