A Note on Separability and Intra-Household Resource Allocation in a Collective Household Model

We consider a collective model of a household in which each member has a utility function satisfying the weak separability condition. We show that the separability at the individual level carries over to the household level and that the allocation of private goods in any Pareto-efficient allocation can be supported as a Pareto-efficient allocation of the private sub-problem. We also provide the necessary and sufficient condition for the Pareto weight for the private sub-problem to move in the same direction as the household Pareto weight.

Keywords: collective model, intra-household resource allocation, bargaining, separability

JEL Classification: C78, D01, D11

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Fujii, Tomoki and Ishikawa, Ryuichiro, A Note on Separability and Intra-Household Resource Allocation in a Collective Household Model (March 20, 2012). SMU Economics & Statistics Working Paper No. 06-2012, Review of Economics of the Household, Vol. 11(1), 143-149, 2013, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2026344 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2026344