In the rural areas of developing countries, teacher absence is a widespread problem. This paper tests whether a simple incentive program based on teacher presence can reduce teacher absence, and whether it has the potential to lead to more teaching activities and better learning. In 60 informal...

In this paper we investigate how fertility decisions respond to unexpected career interruptions, which occur as a consequence of job displacement. Using an event study approach we compare the birth rates of displaced women with those of women unaffected by job loss after establishing the...

Total fertility in Austria has declined slowly but persistently from about 1.7 in the late 1970s to around 1.4 in the mid-90s, a reduction of less than twenty percent. As we show in this paper, a much stronger reduction (over fifty percent) occured over the same period in the standardized rate...

A longstanding question in the economics of the family is the relationship between sibship size and subsequent human capital formation and economic welfare. If there is a causal "quantity-quality trade-off," then policies that discourage large families should lead to increased human capital,...

Recent theoretical contributions depart from the usual practice of treating individual attitude endowments as a black box, by assuming that these are shaped by the attitudes of parents and other role models. Attitudes include fundamental preferences such as risk preference, and crucial beliefs...

Technological change was unskilled-labour-biased during the early Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but is skill-biased today. This fact is not embedded in extant unified growth models. We develop a model of the transition to sustained economic growth...

We develop a model that gives some microfoundation to the impact of residential neighborhood on children’s educational attainment and then test it using the UK National Child Development Study. We find that, for high-educated parents, the better the quality of the neighborhood in terms of...

In Israel, as in many other countries, a high school matriculation certificate is required by universities and some jobs. In spite of the certificate’s value, Israeli society is marked by vast differences in matriculation rates by region and socioeconomic status. We attempted to increase the...

We argue that one major cause of the U.S. postwar baby boom was the increased demand for female labour during World War II. We develop a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility and female labour-force participation decisions. We use the model to assess the...

French children start public school either the year they turn two or the year they turn three. We evaluate the impact of this unique schooling policy on maternal labour supply. Using a Regression-discontinuity design, we show that early school availability has a significant employment effect on...