We examined the persistence of teacher effects from grade to grade on lower-performing students using high-quality experimental data from Project STAR, where students and teachers were assigned randomly to classrooms of different sizes. The data included information about mathematics and reading...

Detecting gender discrimination among children in the intra-household allocation of goods from household surveys has often proven to be difficult. This paper uses some of the commonly used techniques in this field to analyze education expenditures in India. Contrary to most previous research, I...

We show that in the US, the UK, Italy and Sweden women whose first child is a boy are less likely to work in a typical week and work fewer hours than women with first-born girls. The puzzle is why women in these countries react in this way to the sex of their first child, which is chosen...

Using data from the 1970 British Cohort Study, we investigate the role of maternal gender role attitudes in explaining the differential educational expectations mothers have for their daughters and sons, and consequently their children's later educational outcomes and labour supply. We find that...

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...

This paper analyses the intra-household allocation of time to show gender differences in childcare. In the framework of a general efficiency approach, hours spent on childcare by each parent are regressed against individual and household characteristics, for five samples (Denmark, France,...

This paper examines the extent to which the Great Recession affected gender composition at birth. We focus on ethnic minorities in the US known for a son preference – Chinese, Indians, and Koreans. Using the DID method, we find that in response to the Great Recession, the fraction of newborn...

The formation of economic preferences in childhood and adolescence has long-term consequences for life-time outcomes. We study in an experiment with 525 teenagers how both birth order and siblings' sex composition affect risk, time and social preferences. We find that second born children are...

Preferences for male children in Albania are shown to have persisted through nearly half a century of communist rule, and twenty five years of economic transition. Substantial contemporary birth masculinisation is concentrated amongst higher order births. Fertility falls strongly when a...

We consider the extent to which societal shifts have been responsible for an increased tendency for females to sort into traditional male roles over time, versus childhood factors. Drawing on three cohort studies, which follow individuals born in the UK in 1958, 1970 and 2000, we compare the...