Our study is motivated by two disturbing evidences concerning women in India. On one hand, crime against women is on the rise while on the other, women's labor force participation rate (WLFPR) has been declining over the last three decades. We estimate the extent to which the decline in WLFPR...

The strong relationship between various health indicators and education is widely documented. However, the studies that investigate the nature of causality between these variables became available only recently and provide evidence mostly from developed countries. We add to this literature by...

One goal of the paid family leave (PFL) is to help working mothers balance their careers and family responsibilities and hence improve the well-being of their infants. However, most studies of PFL on early childhood outcomes have been based on the analyses of surviving infants. If PFL reduces...

This paper analyzes the impact of supply-side abortion restrictions on aggregate abortion and birth rates in the United States. Specifically, I exploit state and time variation in the implementation of the first targeted regulation of abortion provider (TRAP) law in a state to identify the...

The stagnancy of women's workforce participation in urban India is alarming and puzzling, considering the pace of economic development experienced in the previous decade. We investigate the extent to which the low workforce participation of women can be explained by growing instances of...

We contribute to the long-standing debate on the Italian North-South divide by assessing the impact of public spending on social infrastructure - including education, healthcare, childcare and social assistance - on the gender employment gap over the last two decades, using a PSVAR analysis....

Ample empirical evidence has found that access to childcare for preschool children increases mothers’ labor force participation and employment. In this paper, we investigate whether increased childcare for primary school children improves the quality of jobs mothers find by estimating the...

This paper studies the role of population sex ratio, i.e. ratio of men to women, in the global wave of sodomy law reform in the post-WWII era. Using a global survey, this paper first finds that men are more homophobic than women and such pattern has persisted across countries and time. With a...

Little evidence currently exists on the effects of COVID-19 on air quality in poorer countries, where most air pollution-linked deaths occur. We offer the first study that examines the pandemic’s impacts on improving air quality in Vietnam, a lower-middle income country with worsening air...

Despite a growing literature on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, scant evidence currently exists on its impacts on air quality. We offer the first study that provides cross-national evidence on the causal impacts of COVID-19 on air pollution. We assemble a rich database consisting of daily,...