Doing the CFA gives me an excuse to subscribe to great blogs from economists and The Economist.
Here's an Economist post about establishing a
http://www.economist.com/b
The recommendation to fairly value house cleaning by outsourcing it is one that Juliette and I employed until recently. My reasons were actually explicit in avoiding an unfair portion of the housework being taken on by Juliette.
Indeed, now that our cleaner has gone AWOL, Juliette does do the majority of the cleaning. I always claim that men aren't necessarily more lazy than women when it comes to cleaning. Rather, men have a higher "filth tolerance" than women. Thus it is usually the woman of the household that will decide something needs cleaning and do it. If the cleaning was neglected a little longer a man would do some cleaning.
That aside, Juliette has now delegated me the task of finding a replacement cleaner. Here we come to an interesting point about economic incentives. While Juliette might consider it fair for me to find a cleaner, I have no incentive to do so: the current arrangement of Juliette doing the majority of cleaning is unfair, but incurs little or no cost on me.
I also note that our previous cleaner was found by me when I was sharing a house with a male friend. Here the incentives of living in a filthy bachelor pad prompted me to find a cleaner (rather than do an unfair amount of cleaning).
Perhaps I should lend Juliette my copy of Naked Economics...
