Commitment and the Dynamics of Household Labour Supply: New Tests and Evidence from Europe

The ability of spouses to commit to future behavior has important implications for the allocation of resources between them and over time. Using a lifecycle collective model for household behavior, we propose new tests that distinguish between full, limited, and no commitment, based on the dynamic impact of wage shocks on household labor supply. A novelty of our approach is its ability to formally reject limited commitment, in addition to the other two types, exploiting sign restrictions from theory. We implement our tests across 15 European countries, drawing data from the EU-SILC over the years 2005–2019. We find that the elasticity of the Pareto weight with respect to favorable past wages is generally positive, consistent with bargaining under limited commitment. Past wage shocks thus induce bargaining effects on labor supply, empowering the recipient spouse and weakening the partner. Formally, we reject full and no commitment in all but 4 countries, but fail to reject limited commitment.