Abstract
This research integrates household and spatial economics to examine how partner, labor, housing, and location choices interact to shape economic outcomes. Despite their fundamental role in individual welfare and macroeconomic patterns, these interdependent decisions remain understudied. Most existing work treats households as single decision-makers, overlooking the bargaining processes that drive family decision-making.
We address this gap by developing a novel nonparametric revealed preference framework that extends the collective household model to incorporate spatial dimensions. This approach accounts for unobserved preference heterogeneity while identifying deep behavioral parameters. We construct an integrated longitudinal dataset that combines household microdata from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with high-resolution spatial data.
We investigate three key questions: 1) How do spatial factors influence household bargaining, and conversely, how does household bargaining shape spatial decisions? 2) What are the implications for consumption, labor, housing, and location decisions? How does this impact inequality within households and across geographic regions? How have these patterns evolved over time? 3) What is the impact of counterfactual policy changes or economic shocks on decisions and individual and aggregate welfare?
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