Towards a Synthesis of Economic and Sociological Theories of Family Labour Supply

Samuel Cameron

Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, 1985, vol. 1, issue 1, 43-57

Abstract: Economists have generally ignored the family in micro-economic theory by treating households as one person. Becker’s allocation of time theory has spawned a number of labour supply studies which claim to take account of the family. It is argued in this paper that the labour supply function is indeterminate except under highly unpalatable assumptions. Indeterminacy results in family bargaining which needs to be considered by economists. It is argued that family bargaining is a subject requiring sociological treatment. Economic and sociological approaches to labour supply decisions are surveyed and a synthetic framework, of the two, for empirical work, put forward.

Date: 1985
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://jie.sagepub.com/content/1/1/43.abstract (text/html)

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:sae:jinter:v:1:y:1985:i:1:p:43-57

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().