Exploiting the exogenous variation in user fees caused by a Swedish childcare reform, we are able to identify the causal effect of childcare costs on fertility in a context in which childcare enrollment is almost universal, user fees are low, and labor force participation of mothers is very...

We estimate the well-known Becker-Tomes model of intergenerational transmission of human capital. A Swedish data set, which links individual measures on educational attainments of four generations, enables us to use great-grandparents’ education as an instrumental variable. The identifying...

A fundamental problem in all political systems is that the people in power may extract rents to the detriment of the general public. In a democracy, electoral competition and information provided by the media may keep such rent extraction at bay. We develop a simple model where rents are...