We develop a tractable framework with a fully specified dynamic process of demographic and labor decisions over an individual female's life span to determine the timing of childbearing. Fertility affects women's behavior through three channels: its tradeoff with leisure, its interactions with...

We model the endogenous emergence of social perceptions about occupations and their impact on occupational choice. In particular, an individual's social approval increases with his community's perception of his skill in his chosen career. These perceptions vary across communities because...

In this paper we examine the effect of the EITC on the employment rates of adults who received welfare (AFDC) during the 1990s. The first part of the paper begins with a description of the changes in the EITC over the last ten years, its administration, and what is known about its of the changes...

In this report, we examine the eligibility for and participation in the earned income tax credit (EITC) for low-income families in California during the 1990s. The EITC is a federal in-come tax credit available to working poor families, with the amount of credit determined by the number of...

Data on 2,822 Vanderbilt University graduates are used to investigate alumni giving behavior during the eight years after graduation. A two stage model accounting for incidental truncation is used to first estimate the likelihood of making a contribution and second estimate the average gift size...

In empirical studies of simultaneous-move games, such as sealed-bid auctions, researchers frequently wish to estimate quantities which depend on interactions between the strategies of different players. Examples include the expected revenues of an auction, or the mean allocative efficiency in a...

We examine the impact of a desire for social approval on education and occupation choice and model the endogenous determination of perceptions that influence such approval. In a two-sector overlapping generations framework, agents born with ability endowments in both occupations must choose one...

When data contain errors, parameters of interest typically are not identified without imposing strong assumptions. However, in many cases, bounds on these parameters can be constructed under relatively weak assumptions. This paper addresses under what conditions variables in addition to the one...

We examine the phenomenon of "pockets of teenage illegitimacy" in a model of social approval, where attitudes to such illegitimacy are endogenously determined at a local community level. Both a woman's actual well-being and her community's perception of that well-being in each potential state -...