DISTRIBUTION OF ECONOMIC RESOURCES: IMPLICATIONS OF INCLUDING HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION

The value of household production is estimated to 40–50 percent of GNP in most western countries, and because the distribution of this income-in-kind is different from ordinary income distribution, the concept of economic well-being may include household production. The monetary value of household production is evaluated by a market alternative principle and an opportunity-cost principle. In the last case a reservation wage is estimated, and integrated in a modified opportunity principle, which means that household work of non-working women is evaluated by the reservation wage, and household work of working women and men by their wage-rate. The conclusions are among others, that the inclusion of household production reduces the inequality, and that the women's contributions—money income and household production—functions as income equalizers.     

时变弹性生产函数与全要素生产率

由于缺乏资本价格等国民核算资料,收入份额法在我国的使用受到一定限制。传统Cobb-Douglas生产函数估计的资本和劳动力产出弹性,反映的只是整个研究时期的一个平均水平,适用于估计整个研究时期的平均贡献率,但用于估计逐期贡献率很可能是有偏的甚至是有误的。本文给出了一个改进生产率增长测算的新思路,系统地提出利用非参数模型、变系数模型、可变参数模型和面板数据模型替代收入份额法,估计不同时期资本和劳动力的时变产出弹性。实证结果表明时变弹性生产函数具有更好的统计性质。     

An econometric application of the theory of the farm-household

Employing a Cobb-Douglas specification for the production function and a modified linear expenditure system, the paper presents an econometric model of household production, consumption and labor supply behaviour for a semi-commercial farm with a competitive labor market. The model, estimated from primary, cross-sectional, Malaysian data, is used to analyse the impact of migration, output price intervention and technological change on the agricultural sector. In doing so, the wage-rate is treated as an endogenous variable to be determined by the interaction of aggregate labor demand and supply curves obtained from the estimated micro functions.     

Measuring the relative productivity of multitasking to sole-tasking in household production: experimental evidence

The standard household production model does not incorporate multitasking, although time-diary data reveal that individuals regularly multitask. We incorporate multitasking into a household production model in which time spent in childcare can be sole-tasked or multitasked with another household production activity and we present the results of an experiment designed to measure the productivity parameters of this model. Because utility and productivity are intertwined and difficult to disentangle in any household production model, we vary the utility pay-offs our experimental participants receive in order to determine how our estimated productivity parameters are affected by a change in the utility parameters. Our estimates of the relative multitasking productivities indicate that, while a minute of sole-tasked time produces more of a single commodity than a minute of multitasked time, total household output increases when two outputs are produced simultaneously, hence confirming the economic motivation for multitasking.     

SIMULTANEOUS USES OF TIME IN HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION

A household production function is developed which allows for persons to be engaged in more than one activity at a point in time. Labour inputs are scaled back when two activities are being undertaken. Data from the 1987 Australian Time Use Survey is used to estimate equations explaining input hours into home production by adult members of the household. One implication of the empirical results is that when two activities are being undertaken simultaneously input hours on the activity coded as "primary" and the input hours on the activity coded as "secondary" should each have a weight of one-half.     

ACCOUNTING FOR HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION: A PROTOTYPE SATELLITE ACCOUNT USING THE AMERICAN TIME USE SURVEY

This paper presents a satellite account where households are treated as production units. It extends previous work that treats consumer durables as investment and that values nonmarket household production activities such as cooking, cleaning, and childcare. Services from consumer durables and government capital related to household production are also valued. In constructing the updated accounts, this paper incorporates new time use data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and the harmonized time use data from the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS). This paper also discusses and incorporates recommendations made by the U.S. National Academies panel on nonmarket accounts.     

THE SIZE OF HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION: METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS AND ESTIMATES FOR THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY IN THE PERIOD 1964 TO 19801

Household production as well as other informal economic activities have received scant attention in economic science. In the last decade the view has been taken that there has been a big shift from formal to informal production. In order to examine this trend this article presents estimates for the size of household production for the Federal Republic of Germany which are based on time-budget data collected from 1964 to 1980. To show the sensitivity of the results two different estimating methods the Opportunity Cost Method and the Market Cost Method, are used. Since productivity growth took place not only in the formal economy but also in household production, estimates will be presented which take productivity growth explicitly into account. The article concludes with a comparison of estimates for other countries.     

THE IMPACT OF BEQUESTS ON LIFETIME WEALTH ACCUMULATION: AN ECONOMETRIC STUDY OF TWO GENERATIONS OF RURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN INDIA

Using retrospective data on bequest receipts and wealth over two generations of rural Indian households, we have estimated the effect of bequest receipts on the lifetime wealth accumulation of recipients. We exploit the availability of data on two generations of the same household by estimating a family fixed effects model that controls for unobserved, intergenerationally-persistent household endowments. Our results suggest an adverse impact of bequest receipts on the wealth accumulation of recipients. This effect is much more negative for the current generation of household heads than for the previous generation, indicating that the disincentive effects associated with bequest receipts have increased substantially over a generation. Such disincentive effects are consistent with the commonly-observed phenomenon of "regression to the mean." The empirical results also show that the positive association between schooling and wealth accumulation has strengthened substantially over the course of a generation, implying rising returns to schooling.     

A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF WELL-BEING

The conceptual framework of the system specifies that societal resources are limited by two basic factors: the amount of available human time, and the stock of wealth inherited from the past. Wealth is defined very broadly to cover not only the conventional tangible capital assets familiar to economists, but also intangible human and other capital assets, stocks of organizational capital reflected by networks of social support systems (the family, the neighbourhood), stocks of environmental assets (the sun and air), and stocks of socio-political assets (security, freedom of choice). Human time covers market work, household production, leisure, and biological maintenance. Human time and capital stocks are used within households to produce a variety of tangible and intangible outputs, and these outputs in turn are used to produce a variety of satisfactions (utilities) or to augment stocks of capital, or both. The basic sources of well-being in the system are ultimately of two types: well-being is produced as a consequence of the intrinsic benefits from all activities engaged in by individuals, which is to say that people have preferences over the way they spend their time; secondly, people derive utilities from the existence of various stocks or states of society, and these satisfactions are independent of the way in which time is used. The satisfactions associated with flows of goods are subsumed by satisfactions derived from activities associated with those goods. The system contains a set of linkages among the various parts: inputs of goods and time are used to produce tangible household output, using the familiar notions of household production functions and constrained optimization; tangible household products, which are intermediate in the system, are used in conjunction with human time to produce direct satisfactions or to augment household capital stocks; both household (micro) and societal (macro) capital stocks are linked directly to psychological well-being; household activities are linked directly to flows of satisfactions, termed process benefits in the system; household preferences and values relating to policy variables are linked to public policies of various sorts, and policies modify the constraints and opportunities relevant for household decisions. The system also has dynamic linkages. Modifications of household or public stocks produce impacts on future flows of well-being; satisfactions from activities may adapt to the existence of constraints, hence changes in constraints can modify preferences and subsequently modify activities; and household behavior has a life-cycle dimension which is inherently dynamic.     

TIME VS. GOODS: THE VALUE OF MEASURING HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES

We take U.S. and Israeli household data on expenditures of time and goods, generate an exhaustive set of commodities that households produce/consume using them, and calculate their relative goods intensities. Leisure activities are uniformly relatively time intensive, health, travel and lodging relatively goods intensive. We demonstrate how education and age alter the goods intensity of household production. The results of this accounting can be used as guides to: understanding how goods and income taxation interact to affect welfare; expanding notions of the determinants of international flows of goods; generating models of business cycles and endogenous growth to include interactions of goods and time consumption; and obtaining better measures of the distribution of well being.     

Technical coefficients for bio-economic farm household models: a meta-modelling approach with applications for Southern Mali

In recent years, different types of bio-economic models have been developed to support the analysis of the potential impact of agrarian policies on changes in land use, sustainable resource management and farmers' welfare. Most bio-economic models rely on series of discrete input–output coefficients for current and improved cropping and livestock activities, whereas mathematical programming procedures are usually applied to analyse optimum allocative choice. Adequate procedures for the smooth integration of biophysical information into economic decision models are, however, not readily available. This article provides a new and comprehensive framework for the incorporation of technical input–output coefficients derived from agroecological simulation approaches into bio-economic farm household models. Therefore, continuous production functions are estimated for the production side of the farm household model, making use of meta-modelling principles. It is shown that meta-modelling offers considerable scope for improving the specification and behaviour of bio-economic farm household models. This procedure is applied in a farm household model developed for the analysis of farmers’ response to agrarian policies in Southern Mali. Results are presented for the behaviour of a typical household, focusing attention on the trade-offs between farm income and soil nutrient balances under free market conditions and with constraints on labour, capital and animal traction markets. The stability and robustness of the model is analysed through a simulation of the impact of higher input costs for land use and fertiliser applications.     

INFRASTRUCTURE AND PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY: AN ANALYSIS ON THE KOREAN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

This study estimates an aggregate production function of manufacturing industry using panel data of 11 Korean regions covering 1977–1992. While the previous studies regard infrastructure as a direct input for production, the present study proposes that infrastructure has an effect on actual output by enhancing technical efficiency thereby, reducing the gap between maximum potential output and actual output. To investigate the relationship between infrastructure and technical efficiency, a stochastic frontier approach is applied to Korean manufacturing industry. Confirming the presence of substantial technical inefficiency in production, this study shows that an increase in infrastructure reduces the technical inefficiency level. The study also finds that, contrary to expectation, the industrialized regions are less efficient than the less industrialized ones. (JEL O20, H54, C23)     

Energienachfrage und Potential Output in Gesamtwirtschaft und Industrie

Summary The purpose of this article is to estimate the effects of the quadrupling of oil prices at the end of 1973 on potential output of the Austrian economy as a whole and of manufacturing in particular. The hypothesis is tested that the increase of relative energy prices (energy prices relative to domestic prices) makes previous measures of potential output obsolete. Using dynamic Cobb-Douglas type production functions for estimating potential output leads to the following results. If energy is implemented in the production function (either directly as a third factor in addition to capital and labour or indirectly via relative energy prices) there is strong evidence that part of the prerecession potential output has become obsolete in the recession of 1975. A comparison with an estimated potential output which doesn't take into account energy as a factor of production indicates that such a procedure could lead to wrong policy conclusions.

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Empirica 2'78 Zeitschrift des Österreichischen Institutes für Wirtschaftsforschung

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Für wertvolle Anregungen danke ich den Universitätsprofessoren Dr.E. Streissler und Dr.G. Tichy.     

HOUSEHOLDS' NON-SNA PRODUCTION: LABOUR TIME, VALUE OF LABOUR AND OF PRODUCT, AND CONTRIBUTION TO EXTENDED PRIVATE CONSUMPTION

This paper first shows, with data from fourteen countries, the potential of time-use studies for measuring, in comparable physical quantities, labour inputs in SNA and in non-SNA production. It then presents the monetary valuations of unpaid household labour and of households' non-market product achieved on the basis of time-use data in a few of these countries. Further elaboration of these valuations illustrates the contribution of households' non-SNA production to extended private consumption. The conclusion suggests desirable future developments.     

Technical efficiency of European railways: a distance function approach

This study has two principal objectives. The first objective is to measure and compare the performance of European railways. The second objective is to illustrate the usefulness of econometric distance functions in the analysis of production in multioutput industries, where behavioural assumptions such as cost minimization or profit maximization, are unlikely to be applicable. Using annual data on 17 railways companies during 1988–1993, multioutput distance functions are estimated using corrected ordinary least squares (COLS). The resulting technical efficiency estimates range from 0.980 for the Netherlands to 0.784 for Italy, with a mean of 0.863. The distance function results are also compared with those obtained from single-output production functions, where aggregate output measures are formed using either total revenue or a Tornqvist index. The results obtained indicate substantial differences in parameter estimates and technical efficiency rankings, casting significant doubt upon the reliability of these single-output models, particularly when a total revenue measure is used to proxy aggregate output.     

MONETARY VALUATION OF NON-MARKET PRODUCTIVE TIME METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

After defining households' productive time in non-SNA activities, the paper discusses the most lie quently used wage-based methods for imputing a value to this time. It argues that because the relation between market wages and household output is, at best, unknown, such valuations are not fruitful for economic analysis purposes. The paper then proceeds to show that it is possible to establish an output-related valuation of productive time which per se is relevant for economic analysis. Combined with time-use data, it can be used as a transitional measure for valuing household production at factors cost in a satellite account.     

SELF‐REPORTED ECONOMIC CONDITION AND HOME PRODUCTION: INTRA‐HOUSEHOLD ALLOCATION IN ITALY

This paper applies a collective model of intra‐household welfare distribution using individual self‐reported data. The model accounts for household production, and self‐reported information on economic condition is used to identify the sharing rule governing the bargaining process in the family. The theoretical framework implies a broad concept of full income, which includes household production as time allocated to domestic activities. We find that self‐reported data on economic status are useful in recovering individual shares of household income and that both wages and non‐strictly‐economic individual variables play an important role in the bargaining process determining the sharing rule in Italy.     

ACCOUNTING FOR NONMARKET HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION WITHIN A NATIONAL ACCOUNTS FRAMEWORK

The satellite accounts illustrated in this paper reflect the household's role as a producer and an investor in durables as well as a consumer by modifying the NIPA's to (1) incorporate the value of nonmarket (unpaid) household work into GDP; and (2) treat expenditures on consumer durables as investment and measure the value of the services those durables provide. Additionally, an Input–Output (I–O) model highlights the household's functions as a producer and investor in much greater detail for the year 1992 by incorporating a household industry for each time-use activity and by showing the inputs to and outputs from each household industry's production.     

HOUSEHOLD INCOME PLUS HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION: THE DISTRIBUTION OF EXTENDED INCOME IN THE U.K.

This paper provides new estimates of the distribution of extended income amongst non-elderly, one-family households in the U.K. by combining household money income data and valuations of household production time. Extended income is substantially more equal than money income and extending the income definition changes income relativities significantly between families with and without earners and between married couple families and singles.