Commitment and the Dynamics of Household Labour Supply

The extent to which individuals commit to their partner for life has important implications. This paper develops a life-cycle collective model of the household, through which it characterises behaviour in three prominent alternative types of commitment: full, limited and no commitment. We propose a test that distinguishes between all three types based on how contemporaneous and historical news affect household behaviour. Our test permits heterogeneity in the degree of commitment across households. Using recent data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we reject full and no commitment, while we find strong evidence for limited commitment.