Off-farm work decisions of farm couples: Estimating structural simultaneous equations with ordered categorical dependent variables

We estimate a full system of structural farm and off-farm labor supply equations of farm couples as a set of simultaneous equations with categorical dependent variables. In a first step, the reduced form is estimated by ordered probit with unknown thresholds. Then, the identified structural coefficients are recovered from the reduced-form coefficients through minimum distance estimation. Using census data from Israel, we find that for men, a one-hour increase in farm labor supply causes a one-hour decrease in off-farm labor supply, but not for women. This could not have been found without estimating structural coefficients.