The Italian employment protection legislation was modified in 1990 making more costly for small firms to dismiss employees. Using a difference-in-differences estimator to compare absenteeism rates in small and large firms we find a strong increase of shirking in small firms.

We use survey data from the USA and Japan to investigate whether having leader positions at middle and high school as well as participating in sports and clubs is affected by the gender composition of siblings. We find that having only sisters at age 15 increases substantially the probability of...