Wives' Labor Supply and Taxation : a Conditional Preferences Approach

In the context of the unitary model of household labour supply we test whether the husband's work is separable from consumption and the wife's work. We apply a conditional preferences approach to derive a conditional labor supply function for the wife consistent with a unitary model with non-separable preferences. Our main results are that consumption and wife's work hours are not separable from the husband's labour supply. Further-more we find that the wife's and husband's work hours are complements when men tend to work longer hours than a typical full-time contract.