This paper develops and implements a semiparametric estimator for investigating, with panel data, the importance of human capital and time nonseparable preferences to females when aggregate shocks are present. It provides a set of conditions for making statistical inferences about agents' expectations of their correlated future choices, from a short panel. Under the assumption that observed allocations are Pareto optimal, a dynamic model of female labour supply and participation is estimated, in which experience on the job raises future wages, and time spent off the job in the past directly affects current utility (or, indirectly through productivity in the nonmarket sector).

This paper is an empirical investigation of equilibrium restrictions on household consumption and male labor supply. It exploits a simple factor structure, rationalized by two assumptions, that household allocations are Pareto optimal and that the labor market is competitive. The paper estimates household preferences, and tests how well this parsimonious factor structure represents panel data on married couples and time series data on asset returns. Most of the estimates are roughly comparable to those found in previous work; no evidence against the simple factor representation is found and the intertemporal capital asset pricing model is not rejected. Copyright 1990 by The Econometric Society.