Estimation and Testing of Household Labour Supply Models: Evidence from Spain

This paper provides an empirical contribution to the current debate about the suitability of the collective model proposed by Chiappori (1988, 1992) for analysing intrahousehold behaviour in the labour supply context. We follow Chiappori et al.(2002) and we extend the model considering differences in the education level between the two members of the couple as a potential distribution factor. Moreover, we propose a particular parametric specification for the labour supply system in order to derive the restrictions imposed by the collective setting on observed household behaviour. The empirical results show that neither the unitary model nor the collective one fits the Spanish household labour supply data.