Research
The Impact of Home Appliances on Employment Decisions of Married Women:
New Evidence from Cross-Sectional Data
One of the leading explanations for the drastic increase in the labor force participation of
married women observed in developed countries during the 20th-century, stresses the importance of
technological progress in the household sector (e.g., Greenwood, Seshadri, and
Yorukoglu (2005)). In this paper, we provide an assessment of this theory by (i)
building a simple choice-theoretic model of employment decisions of married women and (ii)
analyzing the changes over time in home appliances ownership for households where women work
versus households where women do not work, using individual-level data from the 1960 and 1970 US
censuses. First, in our model, not all women who buy home appliances decide to work. Second, in
both census samples, the fraction of households that own appliances is slightly higher for women
who do not work compared to women who work. Moreover, the magnitude of the increase in home
appliances ownership between 1960 and 1970 is similar for women who work and women who do not
work. We argue that the theory proposed by Greenwood, Seshadri, and Yorukoglu is not consistent
with these facts. We propose a simple alternative explanation where the demand for home appliances
depends on the demand for home production but is unrelated to the work decision. We show that our
theory is consistent with the facts, both at the micro- and aggregate level.
Engines of Liberation and the Rise in Women's Employment: Which Way Does the Causality Run?
We propose a multi-sector growth model of women's employment and home appliances adoption
decisions where, due to the presence of imperfect competition in the appliances sector, the price
of home appliances decreases following technological progress in the market sector and as a
result, both women's employment and the fraction of households that buys home appliances rise.
After calibrating our model to match key moments of the data in 1900, we find that increases in
aggregate total factor productivity can account for a significant fraction of the rise in women's
employment and the decline in the price of home appliances that occurred in the US during the 20th
century.
Engines of Liberation: The Impact of Technological Progress in an Imperfect Competition Setting
We present some evidence from the U.S. Census about the market concentration in the home
appliances sector (e.g., four-firm concentration ratio and Herfindahl-Hirshman index) which
suggests that competition in this sector, rather than being perfect, is better described by an
oligopoly structure. We develop a general equilibrium three-sector growth model (home, market,
appliances) where the price of home appliances is endogenous and firms in the appliances sector
interact strategically. We assess the qualitative importance of technological progress at home and
in the market for the decline in the relative price of home appliances. Due to the presence
imperfectly competitive markets, the price of home appliances declines relative to the market wage
even when total factor productivity at home and in the market grow at the same rate. Finally, we
calibrate our model to match key facts of the economy in 1900. We analyze the quantitative impact
of changes in the relative price of home appliances on women's employment and the appliances
adoption decisions under the following two (opposite) scenarios. First, technology at home and in
the market grow at a common rate equal to the historical average value of total factor
productivity. Second, technology at home grow at a faster rate. In the first case, our model
captures slightly less than half of the decline in the appliance price and slightly more than half
of the increase in employment rate of married women.
An Accounting Exercise for the Shift in Life-Cycle Employment Profiles of Married
Women Born between 1940 and 1960 (with Alice Schoonbroodt)
Life-cycle employment profiles of married women born between 1940 and 1960 shifted upwards and became flatter. We calibrate a dynamic life-cycle model of employment decisions of married women to assess the quantitative importance of three competing explanations of the change in employment profiles: the decrease and delay in fertility, the increase in relative wages of women to men, and the decline in child-care costs. We find that the decrease and delay in fertility and the decline in child-care cost affect employment very early in life, while increases in relative wages affect employment increasingly with age. Changes in relative wages, in particular returns to experience, account for the bulk (67 percent) of changes in life-cycle employment of married women.