Working as a volunteer is a widespread phenomenon that has both individual and societal benefits. In this paper, we identify the wage returns to working for free by exploiting exogenous variation in rainfall across local area districts in England, Scotland and Wales. Instrumental variables...

Small business activity and female entrepreneurship have become increasingly important features of the UK economy since the start of the Great Recession. In this paper, we re-examine the impact of liquidity constraints on new business formation in an instrumental variables framework, using a...

This paper develops a simulation estimation algorithm that is particularly useful for estimating dynamic panel data models with unobserved endogenous state variables. The new approach can easily deal with the commonly encountered and widely discussed "initial conditions problem," as well as the...

In this paper, we measure the implications of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Palestinian employment and earnings. We quantify the conflict by the frequency of temporary closures of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the number of overseas foreign workers in the Israeli labor market. Data on...

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...