This paper develops a theory of the allocation of authority between two parties that produce impure public goods. We show that the optimal allocation depends on technological factors, the parties' valuations of the goods produced, and the degree of impurity of these goods. When the degree of...

This paper provides a general formulation of the regression discontinuity (RD) design and shows its general applicability to many epidemiological problems. It then applies the RD method to estimate the e�ects of the 1995 pill scare in the UK, using individual birth records and aggregate...

Much empirical evidence shows that female and male partners look alike along a variety of attributes. It is however unclear how this positive sorting comes about, because marriage is an equilibrium outcome arising from a process that entails searching, meeting and choosing one another. This...

Marriage data show a strong degree of positive assortative mating along a variety of attributes. But since marriage is an equilibrium outcome, it is unclear whether positive sorting is the result of preferences rather than opportunities. We assess the relative importance of preferences and...

This paper examines the impacts of family inputs - i.e., maternal employment, child care and home learning - on the early development of British children. Using rich longitudinal data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study we estimate cognitive and non-cognitive achievement production functions...

We examine the effect of joint custody on marriage, divorce, fertility and female employment in Austria using individual-level administrative data, covering the entire population. We also use unique data obtained from court records to analyze the effect on post-divorce outcomes. Our estimates...

This paper develops a new equilibrium model of two-sided search where agents have multiple attributes and general payoff functions. The model can be applied to several substantive issues. Here we use it to provide a novel understanding of the separate effects of equal opportunities for women in...

We estimate the effect of binge drinking on accident and emergency attendances, road accidents, arrests and the number of police officers on duty using a variety of unique data from Britain and a two-sample minimum distance estimation procedure. Our estimates, which reveal sizeable effects of...

Using large longitudinal survey data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, this paper estimates the effec of maternal time inputs on early child development. We find that maternal time is a quantitatively important determinant of skill formation and that its effect declines with child age. There...

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we make two contributions to the literature on end-of-life transfers. First, we show that unequal bequests are much more common than generally recognised, with one-third of parents with wills planning to divide their estates unequally among...