The historical pattern of the demographic transition suggests that fertility declines follow mortality declines, followed by a rise in human capital accumulation and economic growth. The HIV/AIDS epidemic threatens to reverse this path. A recent paper by Young (2005), however, suggests that...

We examine changes in inequality and instability of the combined earnings of married couples over the 1980-2009 period using two U.S. panel data sets: Social Security earnings data matched to Survey of Income and Program Participation panels (SIPP-SSA) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics....

"Using a large, individual-level wage data set, we examine the impact of a major technological innovation -- the steam engine -- on skill demand and the wage structure in the merchant shipping industry. We find that the technical change created a new demand for skilled workers, the engineers,...

Using the Mexican Household Income and Expenditure Survey (ENIGH) covering 1984-2000 we analyze wages and employment in Mexico after trade liberalization and domestic reforms. We find that wage inequality and returns to post-secondary schooling increased rapidly during 1984-1994 but stabilized...

This paper provides evidence on how adverse health conditions affect the transfer of human capital from one generation to the next. We explore the differential exposure to HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa as a substantial health shock to both household and community environment. We...

We analyze the impact on crime of 3.7 million refugees who entered and stayed in Turkey as a result of the civil war in Syria. Using a novel administrative data source on the flow of offense records to prosecutors' offices in 81 provinces of the country each year, and utilizing the staggered...

This paper provides causal evidence on how political parties consolidate power in an electoral democracy. We collect administrative data on expressway construction by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, and use province-by-year variation in expressway construction to show that...

In this paper, we explore the deep economic crisis experienced by the Turkish economy in 2001 and 2008 as quasi-experiments to causally identify the association between economically challenging conditions in-utero and child's birth weight. First, we utilize the temporal and spatial variations of...

This paper presents new evidence on the causal relationship between fertility and female labor supply. We particularly focus on how informal employment affects post-fertility labor supply behavior of mothers. We employ an instrumental variable strategy based on an unused data source for twin...