Relational Contracts, Taxation and the Household

15 Pages Posted: 1 Jun 2009

See all articles by Patricia F. Apps

Patricia F. Apps

The University of Sydney - Faculty of Law; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Ray Rees

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) - Faculty of Economics; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); University of Sydney Law School

Abstract

This paper applies the theory of relational contracts to make precise the idea that because households are engaged in a repeated non-cooperative game, Pareto efficient outcomes can be supported by self interest, given the specific pattern of specialisation and exchange which exists in the household. The household's choice of a particular solution from the resulting feasible set is found by the maximisation of a household welfare function, a generalisation of a suggestion originally made by Samuelson. This nests as special cases the objective functions used in currently popular models of households engaged in one-shot cooperative games. We take a specific example of such a household welfare function, characterise the determinants of the household utility distribution, and then apply the model to examine the effects of a move from joint to individual taxation. We show that on standard stylised facts, secondary earners are always better off absolutely, and define the conditions under which they will also be so relatively. This confirms the conclusions from models which concern themselves only with the across-household welfare distribution.

Keywords: relational contracts, households, allocations, taxation, welfare distribution

JEL Classification: D11, D13, H21, H24, H31, J12, J16, K36, N30

Suggested Citation

Apps, Patricia F. and Rees, Ray, Relational Contracts, Taxation and the Household. IZA Discussion Paper No. 4189, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1412267 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1412267

Patricia F. Apps (Contact Author)

The University of Sydney - Faculty of Law ( email )

Faculty of Law, New Law Building F10
The University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW 2006
Australia
+61 2 9351 0241 (Phone)
+61 2 9351 0200 (Fax)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Ray Rees

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) - Faculty of Economics ( email )

Munich, D-80539
Germany

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

University of Sydney Law School ( email )

Sydney
Australia