Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35713 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 4189
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper applies the theory of relational contracts to make precise the idea that because households are engaged in a repeated non-cooperative game, Pareto efficient outcomes can be supported by self interest, given the specific pattern of specialisation and exchange which exists in the household. The household's choice of a particular solution from the resulting feasible set is found by the maximisation of a household welfare function, a generalisation of a suggestion originally made by Samuelson. This nests as special cases the objective functions used in currently popular models of households engaged in one-shot cooperative games. We take a specific example of such a household welfare function, characterise the determinants of the household utility distribution, and then apply the model to examine the effects of a move from joint to individual taxation. We show that on standard stylised facts, secondary earners are always better off absolutely, and define the conditions under which they will also be so relatively. This confirms the conclusions from models which concern themselves only with the across-household welfare distribution.
Subjects: 
Relational contracts
households
allocations
taxation
welfare distribution
JEL: 
D11
D13
H21
H24
H31
J12
J16
K36
N30
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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