Two key issues in the literature on female labor supply are: (1) if persistence in employment status is due to unobserved heterogeneity or state dependence, and (2) if fertility is exogenous to labor supply. Until recently, the consensus was that unobserved heterogeneity is very important, and...

In this paper, we formulate a dynamic utility maximization model of female labor force participation and fertility choices and estimate approximate decision rules using data on married women in Italy, Spain and France. The pattern of estimated state dependence effects across countries is...

More than 40% of the respondents in the British Household Panel Survey provide informal care at least for one year within the period 1991-2003 and carers are usually less likely to hold simultaneously a paid job. There is little evidence on the mechanism that links informal care provision and...

This paper leverages the interface Google Insights for Search to 'nowcast' Belgian macro-economic indicators such as retail consumer spending and unemployment. Using a general ECM framework, the analysis demonstrates that economic fluctuations correlate with Google search intensity. In...

How much work is ‘‘too much’’ for children aged 10-14 in Egypt? Our narrow focus here is on ‘‘work that does not interfere with school attendance.’’ For girls, work includes time spent in household chores and subsistence activities. We estimate simultaneous hours of work and...

In spite of relevant differences between countries, a common international pattern emerges: daughters leave parental homes earlier than sons. Drawing upon the European Community Household Panel, we explore the impacts of various factors that affect daughters' and sons' home-leaving decisions....

In Italy the participation of women has not increased very much in the last few decades relative to other developed countries and it is still among the lowest in Europe. The female employment rate stands almost 13 percentage points below the EU average and 22 below the Lisbon target. One of the...

According to the agenda for employment set by the EU in 2000 for the following ten years, the target for female employment was set at 60 per cent for the year 2010. While Northern and most Continental countries have achieved this quantitative target, the Mediterranean countries are lagging...

In spite of relatively generous public subsidies and a reputation for high quality, only a very limited proportion of Italian families use public child care. In this paper we explore the significance of various factors on the choices made between different types of child care. In part one, we...

Economic models of household behavior typically yield the prediction that increases in schooling levels and wage rates of married women lead to increases in their labor supply and reductions in fertility. In Italy, as well as in other Southern European countries, low labor market participation...