Working Paper BETA #2009-17

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Title : Household behavior and individual autonomy.

Author(s) : Claude d’Aspremont, Rodolphe Dos Santos Ferreira

Abstract : The paper proposes a model of household behavior with both private and public consumption where the spouses independently maximize their utilities, but taking into account, together with their own individual budget constraints, the collective household budget constraint with public goods evaluated at Lindahl prices. The Lagrange multipliers associated with these constraints are used to parameterize the set of equilibria, in addition to the usual parameterization by income shares. The proposed game generalizes both the ‘collective’ model of household behavior and the non-cooperative game with voluntary contributions to public goods.

Key-words : Intra-household allocation, household financial management, degree of autonomy, Lindahl prices, local income pooling, separate spheres.

JEL Classification : D10, C72, H41