Seminar: Robert Sauer, University of Bristol.

Title: Does it Pay For Women to Volunteer? Measuring the Economic and Non-Economic Returns to a Warm Glow Investment.

Abstract:This paper measures the economic and non-economic returns implicit in a woman's decision to offer labour services for free. The decision to engage in unpaid or paid employment is formulated as a discrete choice dynamic optimization problem. The model is estimated using data from the PSID. The estimated structural parameters indicate that warm glow altruism is an important motive for volunteering. However, volunteering also substantially raises future job offer probabilities and wage offers. The model is also used to forecast the effects of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on female labour supply (both paid and unpaid) as well as marriage and fertility outcomes.