Abstract
Home production constitutes even in modern economies about one-third of GNP. The article discusses Becker’s theory of home production and its critiques. It develops a general model where welfare is a function of market and home goods, market work, work-at-home and leisure, focusing on problems of its identification arising from the fact that home output is not traded in the market. These problems are aggravated in the multi-person household framework, since intra-household allocation is unobserved. These difficulties have serious ramifications for the measurement of adult equivalent scales, productivity at home and home output.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Barten, A. 1964. Family composition, prices and expenditure patterns. In Econometric analysis for national economic planning, ed. P. Hart, G. Mills, and J. Whitaker. London: Butterworth.
Becker, G. 1965. A theory of the allocation of time. Economic Journal 75: 493–517.
Becker, G. 1988. Family economics and macro behavior. American Economic Review 78: 1–13.
Becker, G., and H. Lewis. 1973. On the interaction between quantity and quality of children. Journal of Political Economy 81: S279–S288.
Benhabib, J., R. Rogerson, and R. Wright. 1991. Homework in macroeconomics: Household production and aggregate fluctuations. Journal of Political Economy 99: 1166–1187.
Cooley, T. (ed.). 1995. Frontiers of business cycle research. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Graham, J., and C. Green. 1984. Estimating the parameters of the household production function with joint products. The Review of Economics and Statistics 66: 277–282.
Greenwood, J., and Z. Hercowitz. 1991. The allocation of capital and time over the business cycle. Journal of Political Economy 99: 1188–1214.
Gronau, R. 1970. The effect of traveling time on the demand for passenger transportation. Journal of Political Economy 78: 377–394.
Gronau, R. 1973. The effect of children on the housewife’s value of time. Journal of Political Economy 81(Part II): S168–S199.
Gronau, R. 1977. Leisure, home production, and work-the theory of the allocation of time revisited. Journal of Political Economy 85: 1099–1123.
Gronau, R. 1980. Home production: A forgotten industry. The Review of Economics and Statistics 62: 408–416.
Gronau, R. 1988. Consumption technology and the intrafamily distribution of resources: Adult equivalence scales reexamined. Journal of Political Economy 96: 1183–1205.
Gronau, R., and D. Hamermesh. 2001. The demand for variety: A household production perspective, Working paper, vol. 8509. Cambridge, MA: NBER.
Grossman, M. 1972. The demand for health: A theoretical and empirical investigation, Occasional paper, vol. 119. New York: NBER.
Hawrylyshyn, O. 1976. The value of household services: A survey of empirical estimates. Review of Income and Wealth 22: 101–131.
Kerkhofs, M., and P. Kooreman. 2003. Identification and estimation of a class of household production models. Journal of Applied Econometrics 18: 337–369.
Kuznets, S. 1944. National income and its composition, vol. 2. New York: NBER.
Michael, R. 1973. Education in non-market production. Journal of Political Economy 81(Part I): 306–327.
Mincer, J. 1962. Labor force participation of married women: A study of labor supply. In Aspects of labor economics, ed. H. Lewis. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mincer, J. 1963. Market prices, opportunity costs, and income effects. In Measurement in economics, ed. C. Christ. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Pollak, R., and M. Wachter. 1975. The relevance of the household production function and its implications for the allocation of time. Journal of Political Economy 83: 255–278.
Rupert, P., R. Rogerson, and R. Wright. 1995. Estimating substitution elasticities in household production models. Economic Theory 6: 179–193.
Van Praag, B., and M. Warnaar. 1997. The cost of children and the use of demographic variables in consumer demand. In Handbook of population and family economics, vol. 1A, ed. M. Rosenzweig and O. Stark. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Willis, R. 1973. A new approach to the theory of fertility behavior. Journal of Political Economy 81: S14–S64.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Gronau, R. (2018). Household Production and Public Goods. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2203
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2203
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95188-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95189-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences