Social Interactions in Labor Supply

Andrew Grodner and Thomas Kniesner

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2006, vol. 4, issue 6, 1226-1248

Abstract: Our research examines the effect of interdependence on estimation and interpretation of earnings/labor supply equations. We consider the cases of (1) a positive spillover from others' labor supplied and (2) a need for conformity with others' labor supplied. Qualitative and quantitative comparative statics results with a Stone-Geary utility function demonstrate how spillover effects increase labor supply uniformly. Alternatively, conformity effects move labor supplied toward the mean of the reference group so that, in the limit, labor supply becomes perfectly inelastic at the reference group average. When there are unmodeled exogenous social interactions, conventional wage elasticities are still relatively well estimated, although structural parameters may not be. Omitting endogenous social interactions may seriously misrepresent the labor supply effects of policy, however. (JEL: D11, J22, Z13) (c) 2006 by the European Economic Association.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1542-4774/issues link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Social Interaction in Labor Supply (2003)
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:tpr:jeurec:v:4:y:2006:i:6:p:1226-1248

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the European Economic Association is currently edited by Xavier Vives, George-Marios Angeletos, Orazio P. Attanasio, Fabio Canova and Roberto Perotti

More articles in Journal of the European Economic Association from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().