Empirically estimated flexible functional forms frequently fail to satisfy the appropriate theoretical curvature conditions. Lau and Gallant and Golub have worked out methods for imposing the appropriate curvature conditions locally, but those local techniques frequently fail to yield satisfactory results. We develop two methods for imposing curvature conditions globally in the context of cost function estimation. The first method adopts Lau's technique to a generalization of a functional form first proposed by McFadden. Using this Generalized McFadden functional form, it turns out that imposing the appropriate curvature conditions at one data point imposes the conditions globally. The second method adopts a technique used by McFadden and Barnett, which is based on the fact that a non-negative sum of concave functions will be concave. Our various suggested techniques are illustrated using the U.S. Manufacturing data utilized by Berndt and Khaled

Previous attempts to estimate labor supply functions based upon the constrained maximization of a utility function with leisure and income as arguments have assumed that all time not spent at work on the job is leisure time. In this paper we formulate a model of a household in which time is allocated between work on the job, leisure, and housework, where leisure is defined to be net of time spent on housework. The model is estimated under two alternative stochastic specifications and the results compared to those obtained (i) assuming that housework time is exogenous and (ii) assuming that housework time is part of leisure time.