Taxes, Transfers and Time Use: Fiscal Policy in a Model of Household Production

I develop a household production model where the public provision of home goods plays a prominent role. This model accurately fits time use in the market and home sectors for a broad group of O.E.C.D. countries in terms of both tax policy and public expenditures. Taxes alone cannot explain market and home sector labor supply patterns in the O.E.C.D. Accounting for the structure of public expenditures, in particular the public provision of home goods, is important for model predictions and welfare analysis. The model and data I present show that adopting fiscal policies similar to the U.S. would lead to welfare gains equivalent to ten percent of market and home goods consumption in some European countries. I compute optimal policy rules under alternative assumptions regarding how public revenues are generated. The gains to optimal home sector fiscal policy design are of similar magnitudes to the welfare gains associated adopting a tax system similar to the U.S. for some high tax/high public expenditure countries.