Part-time employment traps and childcare policy

Abstract

We model educational investment, wages and employment status (full-time, part-time or non-participation) in a frictional world in which heterogeneous workers have different productivities, both at home and in the workplace. We investigate the degree to which there might be under-employment and distortions in human capital investment, and we then show how childcare policy can be used not only to correct the ex post under-participation problem but also to provide efficient incentives to invest optimally ex ante in education.