Nonparametric Analysis of Household Labor Supply: Goodness-of-Fit and Power of the Unitary and the Collective Model

Abstract

We compare the empirical performance of the unitary and the collective approach to modelling observed labour supply behaviour. Deviating from the mainstream literature, we conduct a nonparametric analysis, which avoids the distortive impact of an erroneously specified functional form for the preferences and/or the intrahousehold bargaining process. Our analysis specifically focuses on the goodness-of-fit of the two behavioural models. To guarantee a fair comparison, we complement this goodness-of-fit analysis with a power analysis. Our results strongly favour the collective approach to modelling the behaviour of multi-person households. More generally, they illustrate the usefulness of nonparametric testing tools for the empirical evaluation of theoretical behavioural models.