This paper provides a general formulation of the regression discontinuity (RD) design and applies this method to analyse the effects of the 1995 UK pill scare. We show that in the five months following a health warning on the "third generation" pill, conception rates rose by more than 7%,...

In this paper we study the separate effects of unemployment and job displace- ment on fertility in a sample of white collar women in Austria. Using an instru- mental variables approach we show that unemployment incidence as such has no negative effect on fertility decisions, but the very fact of...

The labor supply effects of becoming a grandmother are not well established in the empirical literature. We estimate the effect of becoming a grandmother on the labor supply decision of older workers. Under the assumption that grandmothers cannot predict the exact date of conception of their...