Simultaneous Equations Models for Dummy Endogenous Variables: A Game Theoretic Formulation with an Application to Labor Force Participation

A game theoretic approach for formulating simultaneous equations models for dummy endogenous variables is proposed and applied to a study of husband/wife labor force participation. A distinctive feature of our approach is that the simultaneous model is derived from optimizing behavior as an outcome of a game between two players. The equilibrium concept used is that of Nash. In addition, we show that the logical consistency conditions implied by usual simultaneous equation models with structural shift actually rules out simultaneity for the problem we consider; in our model, no logical consistency conditions are implied on the parameters.