Results

Journal article

Children and Youth Services Review:

Supplemental nutrition assistance program and parents? time investments in children

An emerging literature explores whether social policy programs have benefits to families and their children, above and beyond economic and human capital outcomes. We investigate whether the Supplemental Nutrition Assista...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paternity leave in Spain

Between 2017 and 2021, Spain progressively extended paternity leave from 2 to 16 weeks, equalizing it with maternity leave and introducing mandatory weeks. A 2018 reform also allowed fathers to split their leave. Using a...Read more...

Blog

IMF Finance and Development magazine :

Innovation's Unseen Frontier

Notwithstanding Plato's 2,400-year-old proverb, necessity alone is not the mother of invention. It also requires opportunity. An individual's likelihood of becoming an innovator reflects parental background in terms of i...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Birth timing and spacing: Implications for parental leave dynamics and child penalties

Estimates of the impact of having children on labour market outcomes can differ significantly depending on whether a parent is categorised as employed or non-employed during parental leave. This column uses data from Den...Read more...

Journal article

Energy Economics:

Are friends electric? Valuing the social costs of power lines using house prices

Overhead electrical power lines and pylons have long raised concerns regarding the effects of electromagnetic fields on health, noise pollution and the visual impact on rural landscapes. These issues are once again salie...Read more...

Chapter

The evolution of gender in the labor market

in Handbook of Labor Economics

This chapter traces the evolution of the study of gender in the labor market, focusing on how academic thinking on this topic has evolved alongside real world developments in gender inequality from the 1980s to the prese...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization:

Does growing up in economic hard times increase compassion? The case of attitudes towards immigration

There is some evidence that people who grew up in economic hard times more strongly favor government redistribution and are more compassionate towards the poor. We investigate how inclusive this increase in compassion is...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The distributional effects of trade: theory and evidence from the United States

How much do consumption patterns matter for the impact of international trade on inequality? In neoclassical trade models, the effects of trade shocks on consumers' purchasing power are governed by the shares of imports ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are friends electric? Valuing the social costs of power lines using house prices

Overhead electrical power lines and pylons have long raised concerns regarding the effects of electromagnetic fields on health, noise pollution and the visual impact on rural landscapes. These issues are once again salie...Read more...

Journal article

International Economic Review:

2022 Klein Lecture - Parental education and invention: the Finnish enigma

Why is invention strongly positively correlated with parental income not only in the United States but also in Finland, which displays low income inequality and high social mobility? Using data on 1.45 M Finnish individu...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Labour market shocks and parental investments during the Covid-19 pandemic

This paper studies spill-over effects of parental labour market shocks at two time points in the Covid-19 crisis: right after its onset in April 2020, and in January 2021. We use rich data from the UK to look at the cons...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender stereotypes in the family

We investigate gender-stereotyped beliefs about children's academic abilities among parents. Leveraging survey and school administrative data, we document that parents underestimate girls' mathematical skills and overest...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Fighting climate change: International attitudes toward climate policies

Climate policies to limit global warming have often been difficult to pass and implement. In exploring the policy preferences of over 40,000 people in 20 high- and middle-income countries, the authors find that whether p...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Young people's university plans: evidence from German reunification

Around a decade after Germany's reunification, a long-standing educational gap between the east and west of the country - completion of the certificate needed to enter university - had closed. Ghazala Azmat and Katja Kau...Read more...

Journal article

Social Science and Medicine:

"Better the devil you know": are stated preferences over health and happiness determined by how healthy and happy people are?

Most people want to be both happy and healthy. But which matters most when there is a trade-off between them? This paper addresses this question by asking 4000 members of the UK and US public to make various choices betw...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Does Rosie like riveting? Male and female occupational choices

Occupational segregation and pay gaps by gender remain large, while many of the constraints traditionally believed to be responsible for these gaps seem to have weakened over time. We explore the possibility that women a...Read more...

Journal article

World Trade Review:

The pursuit of non-trade policy objectives in EU trade policy

The European Union (EU) often conditions preferential access to its market on compliance with Non-Trade Policy Objectives (NTPOs), including human rights and labor and environmental standards. In this paper, we first sys...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

"Better the devil you know": are stated preferences over health and happiness determined by how healthy and happy people are?

Most people want to be both happy and healthy. But which matters most when there is a trade-off between them? This paper addresses this question by asking 4,000 members of the public in the UK and the US to make various ...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance:

The effects of parental job loss on children's outcomes

Severe economic downturns are typically characterized by a high incidence of job losses. The available evidence suggests that job losers suffer short-run earning losses that persist in the long run, are more likely to re...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Formation of college plans: expected returns, preferences and adjustment process

We exploit a large exogenous shock to study the determinants of college attendance and the role played by one's environment. We analyze whether, and how quickly, adolescents' college plans are adapted, explore factors le...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does growing up in a recession increase compassion? The case of attitudes towards immigration

Macroeconomic conditions during young adulthood have a persistent impact on people's attitudes and preferences. The seminal paper by Giuliano and Spilimbergo (2014) shows that people who grew up in a recession are more l...Read more...

Journal article

SERIEs:

Job loss at home: children's school performance during the Great Recession

This paper studies the intergenerational impact of parental job loss on school performance during the Great Recession in Spain. Collecting data through parental surveys in a school in the province of Barcelona, I obtain ...Read more...

Journal article

World Economy:

The not-so-generalised effects of the Generalized System of Preferences

We use an empirical gravity equation to study how non-reciprocal trade preferences (NRTPs), enacted mainly through the Generalized System of Preferences, affect the exports of the beneficiary nations. In line with existi...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The gig economy and workers' preferences for steady jobs

Is the rise of gig work, freelancing, zero hours contracts and self-employment a result of people wanting such work or because they have no other choice? Nikhil Datta finds that while workers in the gig economy may like ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences

This paper investigates the extent to which labour supply preferences are responsible for the marked rise in atypical work arrangements in the UK and US. By employing vignettes in a discrete job choice experiment in a re...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The not-so-generalized effects of the generalized system of preferences

We use an empirical gravity equation approach to study how nonreciprocal trade preferences (NRTPs), enacted mainly through the Generalized System of Preferences, affect the exports of the beneficiary nations. In line wit...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Economic consequences of family policies

There is no compelling evidence that extended parental leave rights have a positive impact on female employment, according to research by Claudia Olivetti and Barbara Petrongolo, which analyses the labour market effects ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Locus of control and its intergenerational implications for early childhood skill formation

This article builds upon Cunha's (2015) subjective rationality model in which parents have a subjective belief about the impact of their investment on their children's early skill formation. We propose that this subjecti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The social origins of inventors

In this paper, we merge three datasets - individual income data, patenting data, and IQ data - to analyze the deterninants of an individual?s probability of inventing. We find that: (i) parental income matters even after...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

The economic consequences of family policies: lessons from a century of legislation in high-income countries

By the early 21st century, most high-income countries have put into effect a host of generous and virtually gender-neutral parental leave policies and family benefits, with the multiple goals of gender equity, higher fer...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What?s in a name? Expectations, heuristics and choice during a period of radical school reform

Education policy worldwide has sought to incentivize school improvement and facilitate pupil-school matching by introducing reforms that promote autonomy and choice. Understanding the way in which families form preferenc...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Superstar houses and the American mortgage frenzy

Clement Bellet shows how visible wealth inequality fuelled the US mortgage boom that preceded the financial crisis....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economic consequences of family policies: lessons from a century of legislation in high-income countries

We draw lessons from existing work and our own analysis on the effects of parental leave and other interventions aimed at aiding families. The outcomes of interest are female employment, gender gaps in earnings and ferti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The paradox of the Joneses: superstar houses and mortgage frenzy in suburban America

Despite a major upscaling of suburban houses over the last decades, house satisfaction has remained steady in the United States. I show that upward comparison in size can explain this paradox, as top housing size mirrore...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Rosie like riveting? Male and female occupational choices

Occupational segregation and pay gaps by gender remain large while many of the constraints traditionally believed to be responsible for these gaps have weakened over time. Here, we explore the possibility that women and ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Where does the wind blow? Green preferences and spatial misallocation in renewable energy sector

Are "greener" investments less efficient? This paper looks at the location choices by wind power investors. I measures the efficiency loss in this sector due to wrong project location and explore the factors contributing...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Special and differential treatment for developing countries

Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries (SDT) constitutes a central feature of the GATT/WTO system. Its formal goal is to foster export-led growth in developing countries. Its theoretical foundations ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Parental job loss: the impact on children's school performance

Unemployment is bad news not just for the individuals who lose their jobs but also for their families. Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela examines this underemphasised cost of economic downturns by measuring the impact of parental ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Would you choose to be happy? Tradeoffs between happiness and the other dimensions of life in a large population survey

A large literature documents the correlates and causes of subjective well-being, or happiness. But few studies have investigated whether people choose happiness. Is happiness all that people want from life, or are they w...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job loss at home: children's school performance during the great recession in Spain

This paper studies the effect of parental job loss on children's school performance during the Great Recession in Spain, using an original panel dataset for students observed since the beginning of the crisis in a school...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Long shadow of the Berlin Wall

Do people born at different points of the economic cycle have different outcomes ? and if so, why? Arnaud Chevalier and Olivier Marie examine the educational attainment and criminal activity of children born in East Germ...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Gender and the labor market: What have we learned from field and lab experiments?

We discuss the contribution of the experimental literature to the understanding of both traditional and previously unexplored dimensions of gender differences and discuss their bearings on labor market outcomes. Experime...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Locus of control and its intergenerational implications for early childhood skill formation

We propose a model in which parents have a subjective belief about the impact of their investment on the early skill formation of their children. This subjective belief is determined in part by locus of control (LOC), i....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Gender and the labour market: evidence from experiments

Lab experiments are an increasingly valuable tool for understanding differences in how men and women are treated in the labour market. Dr Ghazala Azmat and Professor Barbara Petrongolo explore what has been learned about...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Gender and the labor market: What have we learned from field and lab experiments?

We discuss the contribution of the experimental literature to the understanding of both traditional and previously unexplored dimensions of gender differences and discuss their bearings on labor market outcomes. Experime...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic uncertainty, parental selection, and the criminal activity of the 'Children of the Wall'

We study the link between parental selection and children criminality in a new context. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany experienced an unprecedented temporary drop in fertility driven by economic uncertai...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Looking ahead: subjective time perception and individual time discounting

Time discounting is at the heart of economic decision-making. We disentangle hyperbolic discounting from subjective time perception using experimental data from incentive-compatible tests to measure time preferences, and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Estimating Bayesian decision problems with heterogeneous priors

In many areas of economics there is a growing interest in how expertise and preferences drive individual and group decision making under uncertainty. Increasingly, we wish to estimate such models to quantify which of the...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Whether to Hire Local Contract Teachers? Trade-off Between Skills and Preferences in India

Whether to hire teachers locally on a contract basis, or via competitive examinations as government officials, is a major policy question in developing countries. We use a Discrete Choice Experiment to assess the job pre...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Priors and Desires

This paper offers a simple but powerful model of wishful thinking, cognitive dissonance, and related biases. Choices maximize subjective expected utility, but beliefs depend on the decision maker's interests as well as o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Importance of Relative Performance Feedback Information: Evidence from a Natural Experiment using High School Students

We study the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on performance under piece-rate incentives. A natural experiment that took place in a high school offers an unusual opportunity to test this effe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Comparing Willingness-to-Pay and Subjective Well-Being in the Context of Non-Market Goods

In order to value non-market goods, economists estimate individuals? willingness to pay (WTP) for these goods using revealed or stated preference methods. We compare these conventional approaches with subjective well-bei...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The marginal utility of income

In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income increases. One needs this parameter for cost-benefit analysis, for optimal taxation and for the (Atkinson) me...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Respect

Becker (1974) introduced to modern economics the idea that others care about what others think about them and derived many useful insights from this assumption. But he did not provide a very complete description of the g...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Marginal Utility of Income

In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income increases. One needs this parameter for cost-benefit analysis, for optimal taxation and for the (Atkinson) me...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Youth-Adult Differences in the Demand for Unionisation: Are American, British, and Canadian Workers All That Different?

This paper examines demand for union membership amongst young workers in Britain, Canada and the United States. The paper benchmarks youth demands for collective representation against those of adult workers and finds th...Read more...