BIO

Irina Paley, a Research Economist at the U.S. Department of Treasury, received her PhD in Economics from Brown University in May 2005. Her general area of interest lies at the interface between the family and the labor market, and its interplay with the wellbeing of parents and children. Her current focus is on the allocation of parental time to market vs. family work, with special emphasis on the importance of the timing structure of these activities. In her dissertation, Irina develops a theoretical model of the household where timing matters for childcare and market work provision (e.g. where the child may need to be fed at regular intervals or supervised continuously, while parents may have to work fixed work hours). She shows the frequently occurring conditions under which the behavioral implications of this model are the opposite of those expected from the general (timing-insensitive) Becker’s model. She empirically tests the two models against each other using the 1997 PSID-CDS time diaries, as well as estimates the household members' responsiveness to changes in their work schedules. Her current research extends this to address the effects of work schedule flexibility on household behavior. She has presented at various international conference including the Population Association of America (PAA), Society of Labor Economics (SOLE/EALE) and European Society of Population Economics (ESPE).