A NEW APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING LABOUR SUPPLY OF DISABLED PEOPLE The effects of job-type characteristics on participation decisions. Patricia Moreno, Juan M. Rodr´ ıguez-P´ oo, David Cantarero ∗ July 21, 2017 Abstract The main interest of this paper is to propose an individual utility maximization model to explain the low participation of disabled people. We account for hetero- geneity of preferences and furthermore time of self caring for disabled individuals is considered as an argument in the utility function. The hours of work decided by dis- abled individuals are neither homogeneous (they depend on unknown characteristics) nor continuous (discrete choice sets). We use data of 4790 households from the Span- ish Survey of Disability, Personal Autonomy and Dependency and find association between time of informal care and labour participation and consequently, the choice between jobs 1 . Key words: Disability, informal care, labour supply hours, nested logit model. JEL classification: J2, J22, I1, I12. * All authors are members of the Department of Economics, University of Cantabria, Avd. de los Castros s/n, 39005-Santander. Spain. Juan Rodriguez is also member of the Universit´ e de Gen` eve. 1 The authors acknowledge financial support from the Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigacin Cientfica y Tcnica de Excelencia/ Spanish Ministery of Economy and Competitiveness. Ref. ECO2013- 48326-C2-2-P. 1