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Introduction
There are hundreds of references to Gary Beckers unitary models--the reference often being to his paper on the allocation of time (Becker 1965) or his Treatise on the Family (1981, 1991), models of the household that dont distinguish between decisionmaking agents. The alternative to unitary models are models assuming that multi-person households include individual decision-makers. Such models have been coined individual models (Apps and Rees 2010) or collective models (Bourguignon, Browning, and Chiappori 1995). Most of those who refer to Beckers unitary model prefer to use such individual models.
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Cont.
Models of care work such as Suzanne Bergeron (2009), child labor and school attendance such as Patrick Emerson and Andr Souza (2007) and of the demand for pets (see Peter Schwarz, Jennifer Troyer, and Jennifer Walker 2007) all contrast their individual model, which is typically a bargaining model or a collective model, with Beckers unitary model. Most of these papers give credit to their favorite model, not recognizing that earlier models also took an individual non-unitary perspective. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, one of the many models that Gary Becker published is the FIRST individual economic model of household decisionmaking. It is one of the models found in his theory of marriage, originally published in the JPE in 1973
This marital good exceeds the sum of the Zf a woman could produce alone and the Zm that a man could produce alone. The market then may determine how the total gain from marriage Zmf Zm Zf is subdivided between husband and wife. [graph] if the number of men exceeds the number of women, i.e. the sex ratio exceeds one, the entire gain from marriage goes to women. If the number of women exceeds the number of men, the entire gain from marriage goes to men. If the number of men and women are the same, ?? No market solution. This opens the door for (collective or private?) bargaining models.
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Becker thus played a pivotal role in the development of individual decision-making models by couples, and deserves some of the credit that is generally given to the bargaining theorists. Now I want to share with you why it bothers me so much that contemporary economists often overlook Beckers individual models. I am not an objective observer here.
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Furthermore, given that I wrote my dissertation with him, I got to participate in Beckers workshop on Applications of Economics in the years 1974-1976. Regular participants included the Who is Who in economics at Chicago including Jim Heckman, T W Schultz, Ed Lazear, George Stigler and Richard Posner. Neither Becker nor Heckman had yet received their Nobel prizes, and Lazear was a beginner level assistant professor. Milton Friedman also attended occasionally.
We as students got the impression that Becker is a virtuoso, a brilliant performer on the academic stage, able to produce a variety of thoughtprovoking intellectually stimulating models. Like an artist, he had a whole palette of models, and he and his students could chose the one that adapted best to a given problem. Some were unitary, some not. We did not experience that there was a unified Becker theory on anything. It was my impression that good economists can pick and choose their models, depending on what works best.
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Intro, cont
After considering all the models of marriage availableincluding a few Becker models-- and hours of heated one-to-one discussions with Lazear, Heckman, T.W. Schultz and a number of fellow students just as enthusiastic about Chicago imperialism as I was, I opted for a marriage model that I adapted from labor economics that is closely related to Beckers D and S model of marriage. In part, I was attracted to this model because in his workshop Becker had demonstrated that when he engaged in an empirical application of his own theoriesin joint work with Landes and Michaelhe relied mostly on his demand and supply models of marriage. These are the models that were most inspiring to students writing their dissertations on marriage at the time. This applies not only to my own experience, but also to the case of Michael Keeley. Likewise, when it comes to models of the family in general, including marriage, fertility and intergenerational relations, we as students got the impression that Beckers models were far from unified. Most of them were unitary, but the economics of marriage was a central piece of Beckers perspective on the family, and a central model of his economics of marriage was an individualnot a unitarymodel.
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LHS: income I: non-work income ( EX: rental income) w:wage l:labor yihi :Earnings from household labor yi: quasi-wage for household labor ( It may not be monetary or material , could consist of psychic, spiritual, emotional benefits) h: hours of household labor RHS: expenditures Pi: :Is the price of commercial goods yjhj: payment for spouse js household labor; it is assumed that j gets an hourly rate of yj:
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Budget constraint
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Equilibrium condition
MUs = y + MUhi = w+ MUli MUx MUx MUx MU: marginal utility y + MUhi/MUx : Total compensation and benefits per hour of own hh labor MUx MU from x w + MUli/MUx: total compensation per hour of labor in labor market
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In conclusion
1/ Beckers individual models have been overlooked, especially in recent years. This is related to the false impression that Becker himself fostered in his Treatise on the Family: that his theory of the family is a unified framework (see p x Becker 1981). This encouraged readers to view the dominant unitary models in his book as a unified theory and to overlook the individual models that are also covered in the Treatise. 2/ Individual models by Becker students are often overlooked, including my own. This may be related to Beckers attitude towards women.
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