Home production, market substitutes, and the labor supply of mothers

Ronen Bar-El, Limor Hatsor () and Yossef Tobol

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2020, vol. 171, issue C, 378-390

Abstract: We study the interaction among the home production of food, the market for industrialized food, and the labor supply of mothers. For this, we introduce a model of child nutrition based on two substitutes. Industrialized food is produced in an imperfectly competitive market where its price, quality, and quantity are endogenously determined. Home-produced food is superior in quality but is time-consuming to make and, thus, entails opportunity costs for mothers. We derive the equilibrium and the socially optimal quality of industrialized food. Finally, we suggest government policies to boost the labor supply of mothers and social welfare, including setting regulatory quality standards and supporting technological changes in the production of industrialized and homemade food.

Keywords: Government policy; Home production; Labor supply; Product quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 I18 J22 L15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268120300081
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jeborg:v:171:y:2020:i:c:p:378-390

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.01.007

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().