A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

Economics and Information Theory

Poverty in the United Kingdom

HEALTH AND DEPRIVATION: Inequality and the north

IDENTIFICATION AND INFERENCE FOR ECONOMETRIC MODELS ESSAYS IN HONOR OF THOMAS ROTHENBERG PDF Are you looking for Ebook identification and inference for econometric models essays in honor of thomas rothenberg PDF? You will be glad to know that right now identification and inference for econometric models essays in honor of thomas rothenberg PDF is available on our online library. With our online resources, you can find identification and inference for econometric models essays in honor of thomas rothenberg or just about any type of ebooks, for any type of product.

Identification and Inference for Econometric Models: Essays in Honor of Thomas Rothenberg

In recent years there has been an accumulation of empirical evidence suggesting that individuals dislike inequality (Alesina and Giuliano, 2011 and Dawes et al., 2007). The literature has built upon estimating the degree of this dislike as well as its causes. The use of self-reported measures of satisfaction or well-being as a proxy for utility has been one of the empirical strategies used to this end. In this survey we review the papers that estimate or examine the relationship between inequality and self-reported happiness to conclude that inequality correlates negatively with happiness in Western societies. Some of the surveyed papers identify particular sources of heterogeneity on preferences over inequality. The evidence for non-Western societies is more mixed and less reliable. Notwithstanding that, trust in the institutions seems to play an important role in shaping the relationship between income inequality and subjective wellbeing. We conclude with suggestions for further research.

/pdf/inequality-and-happiness-3bgnma7oce.pdf

Inequality and happiness

We put together the different conceptual issues involved in measuring inequality of opportunity, discuss how these concepts have been translated into computable measures, and point out the problems and choices researchers face when implementing these measures. Our analysis identifies and suggests several new possibilities to measure inequality of opportunity. The approaches are illustrated with a selective survey of the empirical literature on income inequality of opportunity.

/pdf/empirical-approaches-to-inequality-of-opportunity-principles-2l0h203ocz.pdf

Empirical approaches to inequality of opportunity : principles, measures, and evidence

We put together the dierent conceptual issues involved in measuring inequality of opportunity, discuss how these concepts have been translated into computable measures, and point out the problems and choices researchers face when implementing these measures. Our analysis identies and suggests several new possibilities to measure inequality of opportunity. The relevance of the conceptual issues and modelling choices are illustrated with ndings from the empirical literature on income inequality of opportunity.

http://dse.univr.it/it/documents/it11/Reference_paper_Ramos.pdf

Approaches to inequality of opportunity: principles, measures and evidence

This paper is an attempt to translate empirically some of the categorizations of human development reviewed by Alkire (2002). It compares the estimates of human development obtained on the basis of Sen's (1985) capability approach, Narayan et al.'s (2000) dimensions of well-being, Cummins (1996) domains of life satisfaction and Allardt's (1993) comparative Scandinavian welfare study. To obtain these estimates of human development use is made of techniques developed in efficiency analysis, an approach rarely applied to the study of consumption and standards of living (see, however, Lovell et al., 1994). Our database is the British Household Panel Survey. Our findings vindicate the multidimensional approach to human development but show a great empirical resemblance between the four conceptual approaches to well-being.

/pdf/on-the-application-of-efficiency-analysis-to-the-study-of-4tnetip4cm.pdf

On the application of efficiency analysis to the study of the dimensions of human development

Inequality of post-tax income among pre-tax equals is evaluated andaggregated to form a global index of horizontal inequity in the income tax.The vertical action of the tax is captured by its inequality effect on averagebetween groups of pre-tax equals. Putting the two together, horizontalinequity measures loss of vertical performance. The identification problem,which has previously been thought insuperable, is addressed by a procedurevalidating the banding of income units into ‘close equals’ groups. Thehorizontal and vertical effects of a major Spanish income tax reform areevaluated. Lines for future investigation are suggested.

Xavier Ramos

Papers

Inequality and happiness

Empirical approaches to inequality of opportunity : principles, measures, and evidence

Approaches to inequality of opportunity: principles, measures and evidence

On the application of efficiency analysis to the study of the dimensions of human development

Horizontal Inequity and Vertical Redistribution