Gender Norms, Work Hours, and Corrective Taxation

Thomas Aronsson () and David Granlund ()
Additional contact information
Thomas Aronsson: Department of Economics, Umeå School of Business and Economics, Postal: Umeå University, S 901 87 Umeå, Sweden
David Granlund: Department of Economics, Umeå School of Business and Economics, Postal: Umeå University, S 901 87 Umeå, Sweden

No 857, Umeå Economic Studies from Umeå University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper deals with optimal income taxation based on a model with households where men and women allocate their time between market work and household production, and where households differ depending on which spouse has comparative advantage in market work. The purpose is to analyze the tax policy implications of gender norms represented by a market-work norm for men and household-work norm for women. We also distinguish between a welfarist government that respects all aspects of household preferences, and a paternalist government that disregards the disutility to households of deviating from the norms. The results show how the welfarist government may use tax policy to internalize the externalities caused by these norms, and how the paternalist government may use tax policy to make the households behave as if the norms were absent.

Keywords: Social norms; household production; optimal taxation; paternalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 D13 D60 D62 H21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2013-04-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab, nep-pbe, nep-pub and nep-soc
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.umu.se/DownloadAsset.action?conten ... Id=3&assetKey=ues857 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:umnees:0857

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Umeå Economic Studies from Umeå University, Department of Economics Department of Economics, Umeå University, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by David Skog ().