An Econometric Analysis of Multivariate Fractional Time Shares Using Australian Longitudinal Household Data

© 2020 Duy Tung MaiHousehold time use is an important element of labour supply, gender division of labour and the household production function. My dissertation highlights the importance of individual heterogeneity and the natural boundedness of time allocations in time-use research. First, it takes advantage of the rich longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey,such data are rare in time-use literature. It develops a novel class of estimators that are capable of accommodating more econometric features of the study than other existing methods (including individual fixed effects, non-linearity, and the multivariate nature of such joint decisions) and applies it to the empirical study of impact of children onto couples' time uses. Second, it extends the econometric framework to adopt random coefficients feature. Finally, it studies the factors driving the joint allocation of time use within coupled families: individual preferences, observable changes, and unknown shocks. Overall, I find that (i) the negative impacts of parenthood on women's work hours have been narrowed over time; (ii) the extension to random coefficients is non-trivial; and (iii) individual preferences play an important role in determining the cooperation of household time allocation