Income Transfers and Work Effort: The Netherlands and the United States in the 1970s
利用微观数据的三阶段Probit-OLS模型，估计了1970年代美国与荷兰公共收入转移的慷慨程度对年工作小时数的负向弹性，分别为-0.22和-0.82，并推算出转移增长导致年工作小时数分别减少0.65%和2.7%。
SUMMARY The growing leniency and generosity of public income support systems has been hypothesized to negatively affect work effort. The magnitude of this effect is estimated for the U. S. and the Netherlands in the 1970s, using a three‐stage Probit‐OLS model employed on micro data sets. Individuals are viewed as choosing the number of hours worked on the basis of expected labor income, expected transfer income, labor market and demographic characteristics and health. The elasticity of annual hours worked with respect to expected transfer income was estimated to be ‐0.22 for U. S. and ‐0.82 (1980) for the Netherlands. Combining these elasticities with the annual percentage increases in transfer generosity yields a yearly reduction in the number of hours worked of 0.65% for the U. S. and 2.7% for the Netherlands during the 1970s. These results suggest that growing transfers have had a substantial and negative impact on desired work effort and thus on production and economic performance, especially in the Netherlands.