This dissertation has as main interest how households make important decisions over time. In the first part of the thesis I am interested in some theoretical aspects of this broad research question, first: what are some behavioral aspects of individuals' choice over time? Second: how can preferences be aggregated within a household? The first question is discussed in Chapter1 where I study a behavioral model of choice over time, in which a consumer derives utility not only from consumption, which I refer to as `event utility', but already from anticipating future consumption events. Furthermore, a consumer also obtains a disutility from recall of previous consumption events, due to the feature that the latter then act as a form of an anchor point with which new consumption events are compared. This generates a form of  reference-dependency inside the preference structure of a consumer. In Chapter 2, I address a new property, the non-intersecting Pareto curves, which allows an ordering over Pareto curves defined in a certain environment, e.g. the marriage market or the couple's utility possibility frontiers conditional on the choice of a public good. It is shown that the important property of transferable utility, which allows simple aggregation of preferences among individuals is not equivalent to the non-intersecting property of Pareto frontiers, whereas the latter also allows for (relatively) simple aggregation of preferences. In the last two chapters of this dissertation, I consider a couple of very important policy-related research questions. In Chapter 3, I study the incentives of individuals to invest in their own human capital through on-the-job training programs. I find empirical evidence which suggests that being married can impede on training incidence. This, not necessarily intuitive result, can be explained through a theoretical framework where, within a couple household members share resources through some (cooperative) bargaining process. In this case, possible negative externalities on the spouse of a worker who participates in training can negatively affect the benefits of the latter, reducing the willingness to pay for such training programs. Moreover, the relative say inside the household also affects the way the costs of such training programs are shared and I show that the returns to participating in training are decreasing in such variables which imply higher share of total costs to be paid by the worker who is considering to follow training. This empirical framework then generates an important policy insight: namely that if policy makers want to stimulate workers to invest in their own training, they can do this by improving the relative bargaining power of the targeted group of workers within their households, possibly through less intrusive policies (w.r.t. the labor market) than more macro-orientated policies.The final chapter of this dissertation then brings several insights together and addresses a central research question in the field of intertemporal family economics and household behavior: how good are couples able to insure themselves against risk and shocks over the lifecycle? The literature has suggested that one important means by which couples have more scope for self-insurance compared to single individuals, is the presence of a secondary earner, who can increase his/her labor supply and thereby stabilize household income (the added worker effect.) The extent to which this channel is operative depends on many things, e.g. the particular financial position of the household (how much debts does the household have, what is its borrowing capacity etc.) and how income resources within the household are allocated among the household decision makers (intra-household bargaining). In Chapter 4, I therefore combine a 2-earner lifecycle model (including labor supply decisions of household members) with two features: first, households are faced with endogenous borrowing constraints, where the endogeneity stems from the fact that the amount of borrowing depends on the presence of a collateral assets, which I assume to be housing in my model. Furthermore, and consistent with the state-of-the-art in models in family economics, I allow for bargaining over resources among household decision makers, where the latter can't commit to fixed bargaining weights. The latter then implies that bargaining weights might change over the lifecycle due to shocks affecting the household (e.g. job loss of the primary earner, productivity shocks etc.) I then calibrate the structural model and do some interesting counterfactual exercises pertaining to a tightening or loosening of the credit market, affecting the ability of households to obtain collateral assets (and, therefore, affect their borrowing constraints.) / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Thesis advisor: Donald Cox / <bold>Chapter 1 - Intergenerational Transfer Inflows to Adult Children of Divorce <bold> Do adult children of divorce receive less money from their parents than children of intact unions? Are they less likely to receive parental help for buying a house, starting a business or weathering a financial crisis? Though there is evidence that an individual divorced parent gives less to his child than he would give if he were married to his child's other parent, no study has examined the transfers given by both divorced parents. I approach the question of transfers to adult children of divorce from a fresh angle by asking not, "How much did the parent give?" but instead, "How much did the child get?" I also examine the correlation between parents' remarriage and transfers received. Using data from the 1988 wave of the PSID, I find that parental divorce and remarriage are uncorrelated with the incidence of a transfer. Within the select group of children who receive a transfer, however, divorce is correlated with an increased transfer amount, while a father's remarriage is correlated with a decreased amount. <bold> Chapter 2 - The Correlation Between Subjective Parental Longevity and Intergenerational Transfers <bold> Are parental financial transfers to adult children correlated with subjective parental longevity? Despite rapid and continuing increases in life expectancy, no previous study has looked at transfers in relation to parents' opinions of how long they will live. This paper uses the subjective survival probability data included in the Health and Retirement Study to examine this potential correlation for a select group of unmarried older parents. For mothers only, I consistently find modest positive correlations between subjective longevity and anticipated future inter vivos transfers and bequests. For fathers, I find a non-linear relationship between subjective longevity and anticipated future inter vivos transfers. I discuss the potential reasons for these descriptive results and some further questions that arise from them. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

abstract: Family economics uses economic concepts such as productions and decision making to understand family behavior. Economists place emphasis on the rule of families on labor supply, human capital investment, and consumption. In a household, the members choose the optimal time allocations between working, housework and leisure, and money between consumption of different members and savings. One-Child policy and strong inter-generational connections cause unique family structure in China. Households of different generations provide income transfer and labor support to each other. Households consider these connections in their savings, labor supply, human capital investment, fertility and marriage decisions. Especially, strong intergenerational relationships in China are one cause of the high level of young female labor supply and high saving rate. I will investigate the rules of intergenerational relationships on household economic behavior. Affirmative Action allocates college seats to a separate group. To evaluate the distribution effects of AA on discrete groups, we need to study household's strategic reactions on the rule of college seats allocation. The admission system of National College Entrance Examination in China is a type of AA. That distributes college seats by regions. I will use the rapid expansion of Chinese college enrollment as a natural experiment to check the households' reaction on AA and college expansion. Media economics utilizes economic empirical and theoretical tools to figure out the social, cultural, and economic issues in media industries. The impact of online piracy on genuine products sales is under debate, because people cannot find representing proxies to evaluate piracy levels. I will use Chinese data to study the effects of online piracy on theater revenue. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Economics 2017

This dissertation focuses on analyzing peer effects in household decisions and the diffusion of renewable energy. The first chapter investigates peer effects in two family planning decisions among Chinese households – having a second child and having a son. The second chapter focuses on evaluating environmental policies (tax credit and Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard) on the diffusion of electric vehicles in the US. And the third chapter analyzes peer effects in residential solar panels adoption with a geographic focus on California. In summary, the first and third chapter adopt two structural peer effects models to analyze household behavior under two distinct decision-making context – family planning and solar panels adoption. And the second and third chapter focuses the diffusion of two renewable energy powered products – electric vehicle and solar panels.<br><div><br></div><div>Peer effect measures how much the decision made by an agent (usually refers to an house-hold in this dissertation) is influenced by peers’ decisions under the same decision context. Manski (1993) summarizes the obstacles in identifying peer effects. The first is to separate peer effects with contextual effects, or how much the observed similarity in decision making among peer group members are attributed to similar backgrounds between peers due to endogenous group formation. The second is to separate peer effects with correlated effects, which refers to unobserved household characteristics and are believed to be correlated with each other. We use static and dynamic structural peer effects models to analyze family planning decisions and solar panels adoption decision separately, and these models are capable of disentangling the difficulties mentioned above. For the demand estimation of electric vehicle, we use a random coefficient model which has been broadly used in industrial organization.<br></div><div><br></div><div>The first chapter is motivated by the increasingly unbalanced sex ratio in China. This phenomenon and associated social challenges have been widely documented, though few studies have rigorously investigated the role that peer effects have played in this unbalanced sex ratio. This paper fills this gap by focusing on peer effects in the decision to have a second child, and to have a son. The data we use comes from the 2016 data of China Family Panel Studies, and is a ten-year cohort of women aged 45-54 by 2016; we use a structural discrete choice model to estimate the peer effects. We find that peer choices significantly influence the probability that a family has a second child, but not the probability of having a son. Instead, having a son is largely driven by contextual effects, and in particular, by the education level of one’s peer group.<br></div><div><br></div><div>The second chapter uses the random coefficient model with post-estimation counterfactual analysis to answer two research questions: (1) How much the tax credit has facilitated the diffusion of EV; (2) How much the CAFE standard and penalty level have facilitated the diffusion of EV. We obtain the data from Wards Auto with a years range from 2012 to 2019.We find that the EV market share will decrease by 35.82% if there is no tax credit. CAFE marks down the price of EV in average by 3.4 percent but marks up the price of other types of vehicles by 3.26 percent, whose absolute value far exceeds the CAFE penalty itself. We also find that increasing the penalty level from$55 to$140 per vehicle per mpg below the standard will only increase the EV market share by 0.23% and decrease the non-EV market share by 0.12%.<br></div><div><br></div><div>The third chapter applies a utility-based structural optimal stopping time model developed by de Paula (2009) to analyze solar PV adoption. We use both econometrics model and nonparametric test to support the evidence of peer effects, using public solar PV data obstained from CaliforniaDGStats. And we apply the optimal stopping time model with a confidential data set obtained from PG&E. We find significant peer effects and correlated effects in a case study which contains 20 non-adjacent communities in the suburb of San Jose. And we predicted the adoption rate in this area will increase from 19.77% in 2019 to39.65% in 2029.<br></div>

This doctoral thesis consists of 4 self-contained chapters, bound together by their focus on household behavior and social interaction: Bargaining over Risk: The Impact of Decision Power on Household Portfolios. This paper provides an analysis of the internal financial decision-making process of households, employing a unique panel of household finances of the entire Swedish population. Exploitation of a source of exogenous variation in sex-specific labor demand reveals that the distribution of decision power among spouses is a driving force behind the aggregation of spouses’ preferences on financial decision making. Peer Effects and Academic Achievement: Regression Discontinuity Approach. The estimation of peer effects in schools has received much attention in recent years but convincing estimates are hard to produce due to self-selection. This paper overcomes this problem by employing a regression discontinuity design where student assignment into high-ability classes constitutes the source of identifying information. Domestic Equality and Marital Stability: Does More Equal Sharing of Childcare affect Divorce Risk? There is an unanimity that divorce wreaks havoc upon families in which it occurs and individuals growing up in a one-parent family are more likely to deal with term economic and social difficulties. Identifying means by which divorces can be reduced is therefore an important task from a public policy perspective and this paper investigates whether more equal sharing of childcare is successful in doing so. Do Classroom Peers Matter in an Early Tracking System? The potential for peers to affect educational achievement of students is central to many important policy debates, for instance on the impacts of ability tracking. Whether tracking affects efficiency and equality of opportunities depends on how peers enter the educational production function and this paper provides estimates of this. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2014. Sammanfattning jämte 4 uppsatser</p>

Cette thèse a pour objectif d’étudier l’évolution de l’offre de travail des individus à l’entrée dans la vie adulte. Elle se compose de deux thèmes majeurs. Tout d’abord, nous abordons les décisions d’offre de travail des jeunes adultes et les liens qui existent avec l’environnement familial et les politiques publiques qui leur sont destinées. Dans un second temps, nous abordons l’impact de la naissance d’un premier enfant sur l’offre de travail des mères et des pères. Nous trouvons que l’environnement familial est un facteur d’inégalités entre les jeunes adultes et que la mise en place de politiques de revenu minimum permettrait de réduire ces inégalités. Concernant la naissance d’un enfant, ce sont essentiellement les femmes éduquées qui sont pénalisées au niveau salarial sur les court et moyen termes. Il semble que les politiques publiques mais également les entreprises ont un rôle imp ortant à jouer dans les comportements de retour à l’emploi des mères. / This thesis aims to study the evolution of the labor supply of individuals at the entry into adulthood. It consists of two major themes. First of all, we discuss the labor supply decisions of young adults and the links existing between labor supply and family environment as well as public policies. Second, we discuss the impact of the first birth on the labor supply of mothers and fathers. We find that the family environment is a factor of inequality between young adults and that the implementation of minimum income policies would reduce these inequalities. With regard to the birth of a child, it is mainly educated women who are penalized at the wage level over the short and medium terms. It seems that public policies, but also firms, have an important role to play in mothers' return to work behaviors.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第22949号 / 経博第624号 / 新制||経||294(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 柴田 章久, 准教授 安井 大真, 教授 照山 博司 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DGAM

This work focuses on importance of pension motive for havin children in developed countries. It starts with discussion of conditions, under which old age security hypothesis is likely to hold. It continues with overview of demographic trends in selected developed countries and stresses the negative impact of long term fertility decline on pension systems sustainability and performance. In the next part of this thesis we use cluster analysis to compare pension systems in developed countries and the way developed countries deal with lack of human capital. Special attention is paid to comparison of Scandinavian social welfare state model with Southern European welfare state model and with group of three Asian Tigers. Keywords: fertility, pension systems, family economics

This diploma thesis concerns the issue of economic autonomy of women in marriage in light of the legal institute of community property. The thesis touches upon the relationship between reproductive and productive labour in today's society and its impact on economic autonomy of women. Using the method of feminist in-depth interview, the author analyses the phenomena of allowance system, which is related to the women's exit from the labour market. The aim of the thesis is to contribute to the economic autonomy of women through uncovering of mechanisms of the emergence, sustaining and rationalisation of the allowance system. The thesis' contribution stems from its analysis of the functioning of allowance system, which is specific for the control men have over family finances. As such, the allowance system deviates from the imperative of solidarity between spouses, which is legally embedded in the institute of community property. The conclusion of the thesis is that the perception of family as a solidary institution which functions on the basis of altruism is an example of ignorance of power hierarchy within families. As a result of this conclusion it is necessary to solve economic autonomy of women on the level of the society as a whole, not on the family level, by making reproductive and productive...