L’évolution sociologique dans les deux pays au cours de ces cinquante dernières années a été rapide. Les conceptions de la famille ont évolué dans le temps et dans l'espace, selon les époques et selon les sociétés avec le développement de la famille nucléaire. Depuis longtemps le mariage est considéré comme une chaine entre l’homme et la femme pour créer la famille. Aujourd’hui en France, le mariage n’est pas la seule voie pour créer des relations entre les hommes et les femmes, et surtout pour créer une famille ou pour avoir des relations sexuelles. Il existe plusieurs modes de vie en famille. Les sociétés contemporaines se caractérisent par le pluralisme. Familles en mariage, familles hors mariage. En Iran selon la loi, la coutume du mariage reste la voie unique des relations entre les hommes et les femmes.En fait, ce qui dans chaque société représente une menace forte pour la famille, c’est l’individualisme exagéré et les familles désunies. L’individualisme extrême peut être analysé comme une cause de dérobade pour les individus ce qui a pour effet de rendre les protagonistes inattentifs au concept social de la famille et ne lui permet plus de jouer son rôle de vecteur des valeurs sociales telles que l’éducation des enfants, la transmission de la culture et de la morale sociale de la famille. Dans notre thèse nous expliquons quelle est la place sociale du mariage en Iran et la place de la religion au sujet du mariage, nous faisons une comparaison entre les deux droits, nous parlons de la loi Chiite qui, grâce à sa flexibilité, peut être un outil pour faire avancer les réformes du droit de la famille et du mariage et nous aider à résoudre les problématiques actuelles de la société dues au cadre religieux.En Iran, pour protéger la famille, des réformes sont nécessaires. Avec les évolutions sociales la famille a changé, il est donc indispensable pour le bon fonctionnement de la société que la loi se mette en harmonie avec ces évolutions. Ces changements de forme de société sont en marche depuis plus de 30 ans mais la loi, elle, n’a presque pas évoluée. Notre étude approfondie des deux systèmes juridiques, notre comparaison et notre regard croisé peuvent être une aide précieuse à une évolution, respectueuse de nos valeurs, aujourd’hui nécessaire. / The sociological evolution in both countries over the past 50 years has been fast. The concept of family has evolved through time and place, based on different periods and different societies along with the development of nuclear family. For a long time marriage has been considered as a way for men and women to build a family. Today in France, marriage is not the only way to build up a relationship between men and women and especially to start a family or sexual relationships. There exist various family life styles. Contemporary societies are characterized by pluralism: marriage-based families, non marriage-based families. According to the law in Iran, the custom of marriage is the only way for men and women to be on a relationship.In fact, what is considered as a great menace to the family in each society is the exaggerated individualism and split families. Extreme individualism can be analyzed as a factor for individuals to evade responsibilities. Consequently people become indifferent to the social concept of family and do not play their role as vectors of the social values anymore, like educating the children, the transmission of the culture and of the social morals of the family.In our thesis we will talk about the social status of marriage in Iran and the standing of religion regarding marriage, we will make a comparison between Iranian and French Law, talk about the Shiite law which, thanks to its flexibility, can be a tool for advancing the reforms of family and marriage rights and for helping solve the current problems of Iranian society based on a religious framework.In Iran reforms are necessary to protect families. The family has been changed throughout social evolutions; therefore for society to function properly, it is absolutely necessary for the law to be in keeping with these evolutions. These changes of society structure started more than 30 years ago but the law has barely evolved. This detailed and thorough study of the two legal systems, their comparative analysis can be a great help towards promoting today necessary but reverent evolution of our values.

La famille a fortement évolué ces dernières décennies. Aux côtés de la famille traditionnelle, les schémas familiaux, devenus multiples, ont bouleversé l’équilibre juridique tel que prévu par le Code civil de 1804. Toutefois, l’enfant demeure au cœur de ces familles, car aujourd’hui plus que jamais, l’enfant fait famille. Si au fil des siècles la protection légale de l’enfant commun s’est renforcée pour aujourd’hui atteindre un niveau efficient, l’augmentation du nombre de familles recomposées souligne les insuffisances de la loi quant à la protection des intérêts de l’enfant non commun. L’absence de lien de filiation entre le beau-parent et son bel-enfant peut se traduire par une atteinte à ses intérêts patrimoniaux. Sont appréhendés dans ces travaux les deux volets de la protection des intérêts patrimoniaux de l’enfant non commun : la protection imposée au couple recomposé et la protection souhaitée par le couple recomposé dans l’esprit d’une meilleure intégration de l’enfant non commun. Ainsi, de lege lata, quels sont les mécanismes de protection des intérêts patrimoniaux de l’enfant non commun ? Et quels seraient, de lege ferenda, les outils nécessaires pour une meilleure prise en compte de ses intérêts ? Le législateur doit-il intervenir, ou laisser la place à une plus grande contractualisation en droit de la famille ? / The concept of family has deeply changed over the last decades. Along with the idea of a traditional family, and the different family patterns that have multiplied over the years, these new entities have radically modified the legal structure that the 1804 Civil Code had built. However, children still remain at the heart of the concept of family because, more than ever before, they concretely make family. If the child’s legal condition has been reinforced over the past centuries so as to be fully operational now, the ongoing rise of step families and reconstituted families highlight the lack of legal regime regarding a child’s situation coming from one of these two kind of families. The absence of direct line of descent between the step father and his step child can lead to potential troubles to his legacy. In this paper, two aspects regarding the safety of a child’s legacy coming from non-traditional family schemes will be tackled: the legal regime enforced for reconstituted families, and the legal regime that this same type of family would desire to benefit from for the sake of their step child. Thus, de lege data, what are the main mechanisms enforcing the legal regime tackling the child’s legacy from a non-traditional family? And what would be, de lege ferenda, the required tools so as to perform a better comprehensive analysis of what his legacy requires in this specific scheme? Should the legislator interfere more or allow a wider development of contracts law for family matters?

Chaque personne est susceptible de vivre un accident entraînant un profond changement de son corps. Cette situation redoutée n'arrive pas toujours qu'aux autres. Parmi les personnes qui ne sortent pas indemnes de leur accident, certaines sont touchées par une déficience motrice irréversible, qui peut prendre la forme d'une paralysie ou d'une amputation d'un ou plusieurs membres de leur corps. Ces personnes font alors l'expérience du handicap moteur. Cette expérience déstabilisante ne peut être réduite à sa seule dimension corporelle. Elle implique, pour l'individu, de devoir composer avec une prise en charge institutionnelle (à l'hôpital, puis dans un centre ou une unité de rééducation et de réadaptation, pendant plusieurs mois, voire années), de reformuler son existence, ainsi que de reconstruire sa relation conjugale. Guère étudiée dans le champ de la sociologie du couple ou de la sociologie du handicap, la dimension conjugale de l'expérience du handicap moteur permet de saisir à la fois la dynamique de la relation conjugale et la capacité de cette relation à atténuer une épreuve durable et déstabilisante pour l'individu ayant une déficience motrice. À partir d'entretiens menés auprès de femmes et d'hommes confrontés à une déficience motrice (hémiplégie, paraplégie, tétraplégie, amputation) depuis quelques années, cette thèse se propose, d'une part, d'analyser les façons dont ces individus (re)construisent leur expérience du handicap moteur avec leur conjoint et, d'autre part, de saisir les conséquences de l'apparition de la déficience motrice sur leur relation conjugale. / Each person is likely to live an accident involving a deep change of her body. This dreaded situation does not always arrive only at the others. Among the people who do not leave unscathed of their accident, some are touched by an irreversible motor deficiency, which can take the form of a paralysis or an amputation of one or more members of their body. These people make the experiment of the motor disability. This destabilizing experiment cannot be reduced with its only body dimension. It implies, for the individual, to have to compose with an institutional period (at the hospital, then in a center or a unit of rehabilitation and readjustment, during several months, even years), to reformulate his existence, like rebuilding his marital relation. Hardly studied in the field of the sociology of the couple or the sociology of the disability, the marital dimension of the experiment of the motor disability makes it possible to seize at the same time the dynamics of the marital relation and the capacity of this relation to attenuate a durable and destabilizing test for the individual having a motor deficiency. Starting from interviews carried out near women and men confronted with a motor deficiency (hemiplegia, paraplegia, tetraplegia, amputation) for a few years, this thesis has proposed, on the one hand, to analyze the ways in which these individuals (re)build their experiment of the motor disability with their spouse and, on the other hand, of seizing the consequences of the appearance of motor deficiency on their marital relation.

À partir d’une enquête par récit de vie auprès de vingt et une lesbiennes et d’une observation de terrain, cette thèse se propose de rendre compte de la construction sociale les itinéraires croisés en tant que femmes maghrébines migrantes ou d’ascendance maghrébine et en tant que lesbiennes. En effet, ces lesbiennes agissent sur deux fronts. Celui qui relève de la construction de soi en tant que lesbiennes et celui de gérer leurs relations familiales qu’elles tentent de préserver. Le but de cette recherche à travers son approche intersectionnelle permet de (re)penser les différentes dominations sans ordre hiérarchique et de proposer une analyse qui permet de mettre à jour non seulement les mécanismes d’oppression mais également les stratégies de résistance. De « la découverte » de leur lesbianisme jusqu’aux différentes projections d’avenir en matière de conjugalité et de parentalité, les carrières lesbiennes sont jalonnées par un certain nombre d’obstacles liés aux contraintes au mariage hétérosexuel et à la maternité. Ces carrières lesbiennes sont construites soit sur des ruptures familiales, soit sur des équilibres instables entre des vies lesbiennes d’un côté et des relations familiales de l’autre. Ainsi, face à ces contraintes socio-familiales hétéronormatives, de nombreuses lesbiennes maghrébines migrantes et d’ascendance maghrébine privilégient la loyauté filiale tout en continuant à vivre leurs vies affectives et sexuelles lesbiennes. / From a life story survey of twenty one lesbians and a field observation, this PhD dissertation proposes to realize the social construction crossed routes as migrants Maghrebi women or North African descent and as lesbians. Indeed, these lesbians act on two fronts. Whoever falls self-construction as lesbians and the managing family relationships they are trying to preserve. The purpose of this research through its intersectional approach allows (re) think the different dominations no hierarchical order and offer an analysis that allows to update not only the mechanisms of oppression, but also the strategies of resistance. The "discovery" of their lesbianism to the different projections of the future for conjugal and parenthood, lesbians careers are marked by a number of obstacles to the constraints to heterosexual marriage and motherhood. These lesbians careers are built either on family breakdown, or on unstable equilibria between lesbians lives on one side and family relations of the other. So, faced with these socio-heteronormative family constraints, many migrants Maghrebi lesbians or North African descent prefer loyalty subsidiary while continuing to support their emotional and sexual lives as lesbians.

En France, aujourd’hui, cohabitent des protagonistes de l’histoire franco-algérienne qui ont pu occuper des positions antagonistes, ainsi que leurs descendants ; ils sont communément appelés « algérien », « harki » et « pied-noir ». Cette thèse présente l’étude croisée des processus de construction mémorielle après la guerre d’indépendance algérienne dans ces trois groupes socio-historiques. Les récits des histoires de famille ont été confrontés à l’Histoire écrite par les historiens. Le corpus se compose de personnes nées pendant la période coloniale, ayant vécu la guerre et la migration vers la France hexagonale, ainsi que des personnes de la génération de leurs enfants et de leurs petits-enfants.A partir de la constitution des familles, y compris dans leur dimension transnationale, nous proposons d’interroger les processus de transmission des souvenirs et leurs réappropriations par les individus de ces trois générations. A travers le croisement de ces mémoires, la pertinence de la catégorisation socio-historique est questionnée, qu’il s’agisse de constructions mémorielles ou d’appartenance. Ces mémoires, souvent opposées dans leur regard sur les événements, s’inscrivent sur un territoire au récit national commun, mais dans lequel elles ne se retrouvent pas toujours. Nous nous intéressons également aux représentations de soi et de l’Autre, construites à partir de cette histoire franco-algérienne et à leurs conséquences sur la cohésion sociale aujourd’hui. / Protagonists of the French-Algerian History, as well as their descendants, which occupied antagonistic positions during the independence war, cohabit in France nowadays. They are commonly called « Algerians », « Harkis » and « Black Feet people ». This thesis presents a cross-study of memorial construction processes after the Algerian Independence War within these three socio-historical groupes. Family history narratives have been confronted to History written by historians. The corpus is composed of persons born during the colonial period, having experienced the war and the migrations towards France, as well as their children and grandchildren.We examine the mechanisms of transmiting memories and their re-appropriation by individuals belonging to these three generations. We take into account families relationships and their transnational dimension. By crossing these memories, the relevance of the socio-historical categories is questioned, checking whether they reflect a memorial construction or a sense of belonging. These memories, often in opposition to each other, take part of a common national narrative into which people don’t completely identify themselves. We are also interested in the representations of oneself and otherness as an outcome of French-Algerian history and in their consequences on current social cohesion.

Le mot « intime » en français suggère à la fois la convivialité au sein du cercle familial et la conscience intérieure de l’individu. Cette dualité essentielle de l’« intime », qui attire de nombreux écrivains français depuis des siècles, englobe un large éventail de thématiques littéraires, caractérisées par deux courants : la représentation de la vie familiale et les écrits autobiographiques. En règle générale, l’esthétique du naturalisme établie par Zola est considérée comme indifférente à l’égard de la littérature intime, développée par les écrivains romantiques. Cependant, certains de ses romans présentent les caractéristiques de l’écrit de l’intime du XIXe siècle. Dans cette étude, nous nous attacherons à établir le lien intérieur entre La Joie de vivre (1884), L’Oeuvre (1886) et Le Docteur Pascal (1893), trois romans exceptionnellement chargés d’éléments autobiographiques dans la série des Rougon-Macquart. L’intrigue de ces œuvres se déroule au sein du foyer et se concentre sur la psychologie des protagonistes, qui pourraient être définis comme alter ego de l’auteur. Dans La Joie de vivre, Zola projette son angoisse personnelle sur Lazare, jeune pessimiste souffrant de névrose. Dans L’OEuvre, l’auteur exprime sa vision esthétique à travers la création douloureuse du peintre Claude. Dans Le Docteur Pascal, véritable synthèse de la série, Zola manifeste enfin sa croyance optimiste à la vie à travers Pascal, son porte-parole. Le discours de l’« intime » chez Zola, aspect essentiel mais pourtant négligé de son œuvre romanesque, montre ainsi une mise en pratique du roman psychologique que l’auteur semble pourtant vouloir rejeter dans ses écrits « naturaliste ». / This study focuses on the two themes which the word “ intimacy ” refers to : firstly private life in a family, and secondly internal conscience of each individual. Due to the dual meaning of this word, two mainstream themes in the 19th century literature were formed : presentation of familial life and autobiography. In considering “ intimacy ” in naturalism, which have not been taken up until now, the autobiographic nature of Zola’s novels will be brought to light, as compared to autobiography in romanticism. This study examines and analyses three particularly autobiographical novels from total twenty volumes of the Rougon-Macquart series : La Joie de vivre (1884), L’OEuvre (1886) and Le Docteur Pascal (1893), considering those novels as a trilogy. Those three pieces clearly reflect the duality of “ intimacy ”, in depicting family life of the protagonist and, at the same time, the interior mind of Zola who appears as his alter ego. In La Joie de vivre, Zola, as a pessimist suffering neurosis, is depicted through Lazare. In L’OEuvre, Zola, based upon his experience as an art critic, demonstrates his artistic vision through the painter Claude. In Le Docteur Pascal, Zola’s confession full of optimism, contrary to the past after having concluded his works in the Rougon-Macquart series, is reflected in Pascal who is a philosophical scientist. This study analyses how Zola, who has been deemed as a naturalist in sharp contrast to an autobiographical writer, has taken the theme of “ intimacy ” into his novels through his own experience in private life, and how he produced the trilogy novels which are fiction and, at the same time, autobiographical pieces.

Le « child-therapist » évoque un enfant qui sacrifie son psychisme et ainsi son développement pour la survie du système familial. Cette thèse cherche à explorer son vécu et à mieux comprendre ce qu’il vit. A travers la méthode d’observation et une analyse utilisant la méthode d’IPA (Interpretational Phenomenological Analysis), je questionne son développement psychique, sa mentalisation et la colère latente qu’il peut ressentir envers ses parents. Cette recherche a révélé que certains child-therapists se développent à travers un conditionnement, c’est-à-dire à partir des tâtonnements vers des comportements désirés, ainsi que des comportements qui réduisent les tensions au sein de la famille. Aussi, en présence de ses parents, il démontre de fausses capacités de mentalisation. Enfin, sans exception, il porte une colère envers ses parents défaillants. Cette recherche a donc élucidé le fonctionnement mental du child-therapist. / The child-therapist speaks of a child who sacrifices his own psychical development for the survival of his or her family. This dissertation sets out to understand the mind of the child. Using the observational method and the IPA (Interpretational Phenomenological Analysis) to analyse the data,I set out to investigate his or her development, his or her mentalization capacities and a latent anger that he or she could harbour towards his or her parents. This research showed that the child develops through a form of conditioning. In addition, he or she exhibits false mentalization capacities, but only in the presence of his or her parents. Lastly, the child holds anger and resentment towards his parents that failed him or her. This study helped shed light on the mind of the child-therapist.

Le trouble bipolaire (TB) est un trouble psychiatrique qui toucherait au minimum 1% à 2% de la population adulte. Si l'étiologie de ce trouble reste complexe et multifactorielle, le poids des facteurs génétiques est conséquent avec une héritabilité estimée entre 70% et 80%. Le fait d'avoir un parent bipolaire apparaît comme le premier facteur de risque de développer soi-même un trouble bipolaire. Egalement, ces enfants présentent un très haut risque d’avoir des psychopathologies. Un marqueur intéressant chez ces enfants pour identifier ce risque est le profil de dysrégulation obtenu au CBCL-DP. Ainsi, l'accès à des programmes de prévention ciblés, avant même l’apparition des troubles de ces enfants « à risque » (enfants de parents bipolaires ayant des symptômes sub-cliniques et un profil au CBCL-DP élevé) est une démarche prometteuse. Les programmes centrés sur la famille (Family Focused Therapy, FFT) dont l'efficacité est établie dans le TB à début précoce pourraient servir de base à des actions de prévention. En France, à ce jour aucune étude ne s’est intéressée à ces enfants.Méthode : Ce protocole exploratoire a été écrit dans le cadre d’une collaboration entre le service de pédopsychiatrie et le Centre Expert Bipolaire au sein du CHU de Montpellier. Nous proposons de faire participer 17 enfants « à risque » (moyenne age = 9,6 ans) à un programme de TCC multifamilles centré sur la gestion émotionnelle et la résolution de problèmes afin de voir si la dimension de dysrégulation est améliorée en fin de groupe. Au terme de ce groupe et à 12 mois, une réévaluation est proposée afin d’en mesurer les éventuels bénéfices par rapport à l’évaluation initiale.Résultats : Une amélioration significative est montrée sur la dimension de dysrégulation à la fin du groupe (p = 0,007) et en phase de suivi (p = <.001). Toutefois, compte tenu des limites méthodologiques de notre étude et en l’absence de groupe contrôle, il faut être prudent quant aux conclusions et répliquer cette étude avec un groupe contrôle. / Bipolar disorder (BD) is a psychiatric disorder that affects about 1% to 2% of adults. Its aetiology is complex and multifactorial but the genetic factors play an important role, with an estimated heritability between 70% and 80%. Having a bipolar parent appears to be the first risk factor for self-development of BD. Also, these children present a very high risk of having disorders.In this context, a high score in the Child Behavior Check-List-Dysregualtion Profile (CBCL-DP) is constantly reported as a reliable screener. Offering the identified children targeted prevention programs, in order to provide them strategies to face the developing symptoms, is a promising approach. The Family Focused Therapy (FFT) is a multifamily, parents-children CBT program. Its effectiveness was proved in early-onset BD and it is now considered as a possible preventive action for BD offsprings. In France, no study have been conducted on this population Method : The aim of our research is to test the efficacy of a FFT program on a French sample of 17 parents and BD offsprings (mean age = 9,6 years). The protocol was written in the context of a collaboration between the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) St Eloi and the Bipolar Expert Centre, within the University Hospital of Montpellier. Families were involved in a CBT program that focuses on emotion and problem solving strategies. Assessment was conducted at the end of this group and after 12 months, in order to measure the benefits compared to the first evaluation. Results: A significant decrease is shown on the dysregulation dimension at the end of the group (p = 0,007) and in the follow-up phase (p = <.001). However, given the methodological limitations of our study and in the absence of a control group, one should be cautious when considering caution should be exercised in making the findings. A replication of this first exploratory study, including a control group, is now necesary.

Depuis 'Ecclesia in Africa', le concept de l’Eglise-Famille-de-Dieu est identifié comme le concept africain de l’inculturation de l’ecclésiologie de communion du concile Vatican II et la clé de la nouvelle évangélisation en Afrique. Son adoption suscite des polémiques chez des pasteurs et des théologiens africains, notamment au sujet de sa genèse et de sa pertinence. Plusieurs études bibliques et théologiques ont été effectuées au sujet du concept de l’Eglise- Famille-de-Dieu. Celles-ci ont surtout pour vocation à le valider comme le concept ecclésiologique africain. Or la promotion faite au concept de l’Eglise-Famille-de-Dieu au plan continental, national et diocésain n’est qu’institutionnelle voire même conventionnelle. Pour dépasser le cadre d’une appropriation simplement superficielle de ce concept, il nous paraît nécessaire et urgent d’accorder une place prioritaire aux spécificités historiques, culturelles et communautaires de chaque Église locale à l’instar de l’expérience ecclésiale du Burkina Faso qui apparaît comme le modèle fondateur. La présente contribution, qui se veut une étude monographique, met en évidence la genèse du concept de l’Eglise-Famille-de-Dieu au Burkina Faso et mesure sa pertinence dans un champ ecclésial particulier : celui de l’Église catholique au Togo. En définitive, il s’agit de tenter une refondation de l’Eglise-Famille-de- Dieu en vue d’une réception communautaire de Vatican II et d’'Ecclesia in Africa'. / Since 'Ecclesia in Africa', the concept of the Church as Family of God has been identified as the African concept for the development of the Ecclesiology of communion advised by the second Vatican Council and as the key of the new evangelization in Africa. Its adoption has given rise to polemics among African priests and theologians, in particular concerning its genesis and its significance. Several biblical and theological studies have been carried out about the concept of the Church as Family of God. Their aim is mostly to confirm it as the ecclesiological concept in Africa. However it turns out that the promotion given at the continental, national and diocesan levels to the concept of the Church as Family of God is merely institutional or even conventional. To transcend a purely superficial implementation of the concept it seems necessary and urgent that primary importance be given to each local Church’s specific features, in terms of history, culture and community life, following the example of the experience of the Church in Burkina Faso, which turns out to be the founding model. The present work, which aims to be a monograph, delineates the genesis of the concept of the Church as Family of God in Burkina Faso and assesses its significance in a given field : the Roman Catholic Church in Togo. Eventually it attempts to reform the concept of the Church as Family of God with a view to sustaining a community reception of the second Vatican Council and of 'Ecclesia in Africa' in Togo.

This thesis is concerned with a fundamental unit of the economy: Households. Even in advanced economies, upwards of 70% of the population live in households composed of multiple people. A large number of decisions are taken at the level of the household, that is to say, they are taken jointly by household members: How to raise children, how much and when to work, how many cartons of milk to purchase. How these decisions are made is therefore of great importance for the people who live in them and for their well-being.But precisely because household members make decisions jointly it is hard to know how they come about and to what extent they benefit individual members. This is why households are often viewed as unique decision makers in economics. Even if they contain multiple people, they are treated as though they were a single person with a single set of preferences. This unitary approach is often sufficient and can be a helpful simplification. But in many situations it does not deliver an adequate description of household behavior. For instance, the unitary model does not permit the study of individual wellbeing and inequality inside the household. In addition, implications of the unitary model have been rejected repeatedly in the demand literature.Bargaining models offer an alternative where household members have individual preferences and come to joint decisions in various ways. There are by now a great number of such models, all of which allow for the study of bargaining power, a measure of the influence a member has in decision making. This concept is important because it has implications for the welfare of individuals. If one household member’s bargaining power increases, the household’s choices will be more closely aligned with that member’s preferences, ceteris paribus.The three chapters below can be divided into two parts. The first part consists of Chapter 1, which looks to detect the influence of intra-household bargaining in a specific set of consumption choices: Consumption of the arts. The research in this chapter is designed to measure aspects of the effect of bargaining power in this domain, but does not seek to quantify bargaining power itself or to infer economic well-being of household members.Precisely this last point, however, is the focus of the second part of the thesis, consisting of Chapters 2 and 3. These focus specifically on the recovery of one measure of bargaining power, the resource share. Resource shares have the advantage of being interpretable in terms of economic well-being, which is not true of all such measures. They are estimated as part of structural models of household demand. These models are versions of the collective model of household decision making.Pioneered by Chiappori (1988) and Apps and Rees (1988), the collective model has become the go-to alternative to unitary approaches, where the household is seen as a single decision-making unit with a single well-behaved utility function. Instead, the collective model allows for individual utility functions for each member of the household. The model owes much of its success to the simplicity of its most fundamental assumption: That whatever the structure of the intra-household bargaining process, outcomes are Pareto-efficient. This means that no member can be made better off, without making another worse off. Though the model nests unitary models as special cases, it does have testable implications.The first chapter of the thesis is entitled “Household Decisions on Arts Consumption” and is joint work with Caterina Mauri, who has also collaborated with me on many other projects in her capacity as my girlfriend. In it, we explore the role of intra-household bargaining in arts consumption. We do this by estimating demand for various arts and cultural events such as the opera or dance performances using a large number of explanatory variables. One of these variables plays a special role. This variable is a distribution factor, meaning that it can be reasonably assumed to affect consumption only through the bargaining process, and not by modifying preferences. Such variables play an important role in the household bargaining literature. Here, three such variables are used. Among them is the share of household income that is contributed by the husband, the canonical distribution factor.The chapter fits into a literature on drivers of arts consumption, which has shown that in addition to such factors as age, income and education, spousal preferences and characteristics are important in determining how much and which cultural goods are consumed. Gender differences in preferences in arts consumption have also been shown to be important and to persist after accounting for class, education and other socio-economic factors (Bihagen and Katz-Gerro, 2000).We explore to what extent this difference in preferences can be used to shed light on the decision process in couples’ households. Using three different distribution factors, we infer whether changes in the relative bargaining power of spouses induce changes in arts consumption.Using a large sample from the US Current Population Survey which includes data on the frequency of visits to various categories of cultural activities, we regress atten- dance rates on a range of socio-economic variables using a suitable count data model.We find that attendance by men at events such as the opera, ballet and other dance performances, which are more frequently attended by women than by men, show a significant influence of the distribution factors. This significant effect persists irrespec- tively of which distribution factor is used. We conclude that more influential men tend to participate in these activities less frequently than less influential men, conditionally on a host of controls notably including hours worked.The second chapter centers around the recovery of resource shares. This chapter is joint work with Denni Tommasi, a fellow PhD student at ECARES. It relies on the collective model of the household, which assumes simply that household decisions are Pareto-efficient. From this assumption, a relatively simple household problem can be formulated. Households can be seen as maximizers of weighted sums of their members’ utility functions. Importantly the weights, known as bargaining weights (or bargaining power), may depend on many factors, including prices. The household problem in turn implies structure for household demand, which is observed in survey data.Collective demand systems do not necessarily identify measures of bargaining power however. In fact, the ability to recover such a measure, and especially one that is useful for welfare analysis, was an important milestone in the literature. It was reached by (Browning et al. 2013) (henceforth BCL), with a collective model capable of identi- fying resource shares (also known as a sharing rule). These shares provide a measure of how resources are allocated in the household and so can be used to study intra- household consumption inequality. They also take into account that households gen- erate economies of scale for their members, a phenomenon known as a consumption technology: By sharing goods such as housing, members of households can generate savings that can be used elsewhere.Estimation of these resource shares involves expressing household budget shares functions of preferences, a consumption technology and a sharing rule, each of which is a function of observables, and letting the resulting system loose on the data. But obtaining such a demand system is not free. In addition to the usual empirical speci- fications of the various parts of the system, an identifying assumption has to be made to assure that resource shares can be recovered in estimation. In BCL, this is the assumption that singles and adult members of households share the same preferences. In Chapter 2, however, an alternative assumption is used.In a recent paper, Dunbar et al. (2013) (hereafter DLP) develop a collective model based on BCL that allows to identify resource shares using assumptions on the simi- larity of preferences within and between households. The model uses demand only for assignable goods, a favorite of household economists. These are goods such as mens’ clothing and womens’ clothing for which it is known who in a household consumes them. In this chapter, we show why, especially when the data exhibit relatively flat Engel curves, the model is weakly identified and induces high variability and an im- plausible pattern in least squares estimates.We propose an estimation strategy nested in their framework that greatly reduces this practical impediment to recovery of individual resource shares. To achieve this, we follow an empirical Bayes method that incorporates additional (or out-of-sample) information on singles and relies on mild assumptions on preferences. We show the practical usefulness of this strategy through a series of Monte Carlo simulations and by applying it to Mexican data.The results show that our approach is robust, gives a plausible picture of the house- hold decision process, and is particularly beneficial for the practitioner who wishes to apply the DLP framework. Our welfare analysis of the PROGRESA program in Mexico is the first to include separate poverty rates for men and women in a CCT program.The third Chapter addresses a problem similar to the one discussed in Chapter 2. The goal, again, is to estimate resource shares and to remedy issues of imprecision and instability in the demand systems that can deliver them. Here, the collective model used is based on Lewbel and Pendakur (2008), and uses data on the entire basket of goods that households consume. The identifying assumption is similar to that used by BCL, although I allow for some differences in preferences between singles and married individuals.I set out to improve the precision and stability of the resulting estimates, and so to make the model more useful for welfare analysis. In order to do so, this chapter approaches, for the first time, the estimation of a collective household demand system from a Bayesian perspective. Using prior information on equivalence scales, as well as restrictions implied by theory, tight credible intervals are found for resource shares, a measure of the distribution of economic well-being in a household. A modern MCMC sampling method provides a complete picture of the high-dimensional parameter vec- tor’s posterior distribution and allows for reliable inference.The share of household earnings generated by a household member is estimated to have a positive effect on her share of household resources in a sample of couples from the US Consumer Expenditure survey. An increase in the earnings share of one percentage point is estimated to result in a shift of between 0.05% and 0.14% of household resources in the same direction, meaning that spouses partially insure one another against such shifts. The estimates imply an expected shift of 0.71% of household resources from the average man to the average woman in the same sample between 2008 and 2012, when men lost jobs at a greater rate than women.Both Chapters 2 and 3 explore unconventional ways to achieve gains in estimator precision and reliability at relatively little cost. This represents a valuable contribution to a literature that, for all its merits in complexity and ingenious modeling, has not yet seriously endeavored to make itself empirically useful. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished