On Modelling the Social Interaction of Couples
Abstract
In this paper we contribute to the existing microeconomic literature on social interaction, which has generally focused on social interaction from an individual’s perspective. Given that decisions regarding social interaction are often made within the context of a couple or family, we explore the potential interdependence between the social interaction of husbands and wives from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective. We develop a theoretical framework based on an extension of Becker (1974) to include factors which characterise aspects of a couple’s decision-making in relation to social interaction and show that these factors support a tendency towards a positive correlation between the husband’s and wife’s levels of social interaction. Indeed, our empirical findings suggest such a positive association between the social interaction of husbands and wives as measured by active club membership and the frequency of the social interaction activities. In addition, we find that this positive association is particularly pronounced across the same types of club membership or social activities.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 2012001.Length: 27 pages
Date of creation: Jan 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:shf:wpaper:2012001
Contact details of provider:
Postal: 9 Mappin Street, SHEFFIELD, S1 4DT
Phone: +44 114 222 3399
Fax: + 44 (0)114 222 3458
Email:
Web page: http://www.shef.ac.uk/economics
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: Couples; Panel Data; Social Interaction;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
- D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Personal Finance
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2012-01-18 (All new papers)
- NEP-SOC-2012-01-18 (Social Norms & Social Capital)
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:shf:wpaper:2012001For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (David Cuberes).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

