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American Economic Review Vol. 92 No. 4 2002

Testing Intertemporal Substitution, Implicit Contracts, and Hours Restriction Models of the Labor Market Using Micro Data

John C. Ham1; Kevin T. Reilly2

1 Department of Economics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43215. · 2 Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT UK.

Abstract

We present new tests of three theories of the labor market: intertemporal substitution, hours restrictions, and implicit contracts. The intertemporal substitution test we implement is an exclusion test robust to many specification errors and we consistently reject this model. We model hours restrictions as part of an endogenous switching model. We compare the implicit probit equation to an unrestricted probit equation for unemployment and reject the hours restriction model. For the implicit contracts model, we estimate nonseparable within-period labor-supply and consumption equations. We test a cross-equation restriction of the model and cannot reject the implicit contracts model.

DOI
10.1257/00028280260344524
Volume
92
Issue
4
Pages
905-927
Language
en
Sources
crossref openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib

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