This paper examines how culture impacts within-couple gender inequality. Exploiting the setting of Germany's division and reunification, I compare child penalties of East Germans who were socialised in a more gender egalitarian culture to West Germans socialised in a gender-traditional culture....

We examine the relationship between parenting activities and center-based care using time diary and survey data for mothers in Germany. While mothers using center-based care spend significantly less time in the presence of their child, we find that differences in the time spent on specific...

This paper examines how culture impacts within-couple gender inequality. I compare child penalties of couples socialised in a more gender-egalitarian culture to those in a gender-traditional culture exploiting the setting of Germany's division and reunification. The long-run penalty on the...

The COVID-19 pandemic and related closures of daycare centers and schools significantly increased the amount of care work done by parents. There is much speculation over whether the pandemic increased or decreased gender equality in parental care work. Based on representative data for Germany we...

We study the local evolution of female labour supply and cultural norms in West Germany in reaction to the sudden presence of East Germans who migrated to the West after reunication. These migrants grew up with high rates of maternal employment, whereas West German families mostly followed the...

We quantify micro and macro effects of changes in the potential benefit duration (PBD) in unemployment insurance. In Poland, the PBD is 12 months for the newly unemployed if the previous year's county unemployment rate is more than 150% of the national average, and 6 months otherwise. We exploit...

We exploit policy discontinuities in Poland’s unemployment insurance to examine the causal effect of changes to both benefit durations and levels. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we uncover three findings: (1) Higher benefit levels distort employment more than benefit extensions....

This paper studies costly political resistance in a non-democracy. When Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945, 40% of the designated Soviet occupation zone was initially captured by the western Allied Expeditionary Force. This occupation was short-lived: Soviet forces took over after less than...

Does voting have downstream consequences for turnout and political preferences? While research initially showed strong support for the notion that the experience of voting fosters civic habits and political engagement, recent work has cast doubt on how universal these patterns are. We contribute...

This paper exploits the idiosyncratic line of contact separating Allied and Soviet troops within East Germany at the end of WWII to study political resistance in a non-democracy. When Nazi Germany surrendered, 40% of what would become the authoritarian German Democratic Republic was initially...