Through its "comfort women" framework, the World War II Japanese military extended its licensing regime for domestic prostitution to the brothels next to its overseas bases. That regime imposed strenuous health standards, which the military needed to control the venereal disease that had...

Social norms can mitigate the effectiveness of formal institutions, in particular the way legal reforms may affect women's autonomy. We examine this question in the context of ethnic variation in traditional post-marital cohabitation, i.e. matrilocality versus patrilocality. We use...

Reforms that reduce alimony can affect married couples in two different ways. First, reduced alimony lowers the bargaining power of the payee, usually the wife. Second, reduced alimony lowers the incentives of wives to engage in the traditional male breadwinner model of household specialization....

In one of the greatest extensions of property rights in human history, common law countries began giving rights to married women in the 1850s. Before this "women's liberation," the doctrine of coverture strongly incentivized parents of daughters to hold real estate, rather than financial assets...

The 1980 Hague Convention must be read today in light of the 2011 Istanbul Convention that brings to full light that violence against women is a world-wide phenomenon, and “one of the most serious forms of gender-based violations of human rights in Europe that is still shrouded in silence”....

Many countries have enacted legislation over the past few decades making divorce easier. Some countries have legalized divorce where it had previously been banned, and many have eased the conditions required for a divorce, such as allowing unilateral divorce (both spouses do not have to agree on...

This paper considers arguments about Islam and women's welfare, and, at greater length, how legal systems with Islamic elements treat women, with a focus on how women fare in Islamic family courts. Key methodological issues include how to focus on real-world views and practices rather than only...

This paper analyzes the intergenerational effects following the positive changes in women's inheritance rights in India. Using the Indian Human Development Survey data for rural India and a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that the property rights reform significantly increased...

Almost half of missing women in India are of post-reproductive ages. I show that intra-household gender inequality and gender asymmetry in poverty can account for a substantial fraction of these missing women. Using a natural experiment, I link women's intra-household bargaining power to their...

This paper estimates the causal effect of a targeted panic button program-implemented in two Turkish provinces between 2012 and 2016-on domestic violence against women. Diffin- diff and synthetic control estimates suggest that the program notably increased physical domestic violence against...