A rich economic literature has examined the human capital impacts of disease-eliminating health interventions, such as the rollout of new vaccines. This literature is based on reduced-form approaches which exploit proxies for disease burden, such as mortality, instead of actual infection counts,...

This paper studies the consequences of the buildup of a new economic sector - the Norwegian petroleum industry - on investment in human capital. We assess both short-term and long-term effects for a broad set of educational margins, by comparing individuals in regions exposed to the new sector...

This paper tests for the long-term and short-term relationships between fertility and relative cohort size for the United States using the annual time series data between 1913 and 2001. An error correction model, imbedded with the cointegration theory, is coupled with the general impulse...

We examine the second-best family policy under the assumption that both the number and the future earning capacities of the children born to a couple are random variables with probability distributions conditional on unobservable parental actions. Potential parents take their decisions without...

We evaluate the effect of a 2003 reform in the Spanish income tax on fertility and the employment of mothers with small children. The reform introduced a tax credit for working mothers with children under the age of three, while also increasing child deductions for all households with children....

Over the last decades many OECD countries introduced parental leave regulations in order to counteract low and decreasing birth rates. In general, these regulations aim at making parenthood more attractive and more compatible with a working career, especially for women. The recent German...

"There is a large empirical literature on policy measures targeted at children but surprisingly very little theoretical foundation to ground the debate on the optimality of the different instruments. In the present paper, we examine the merit of targeting children through two general policies,...

In developing societies, social norms typically ascribe differential weights to paternal, maternal and communal (or state) contributions to children's expenses. Individuals internalize these valuations. I examine a Cournot model of voluntary contribution to children's goods in a two-adult...

There is a heated debate in the US, Canada and many European countries about introducing universally accessible child care. However, studies on universal child care and child development are scarce and only consider short-run outcomes. We analyze the introduction of universal child care in...

The effects of a recent Swedish child-care fee reform are compared with those of an alternative reform, increased child benefits. The fee reform implied considerably decreased fees and was intended to increase both labor supply among parents and their economic well-being. We estimate labor...