districting and government overspending theories of government spending driven by a common pool problem in the fiscal revenues pool predict that greater districting of a political jurisdiction raises the scale of government this paper presents evidence on this and related predictions from a cross section of city governments in the united states the main finding is that when other plausible determinants of government spending are controlled for greater districting leads to a considerably greater scale of government activity the results also show that at large electoral systems do not and forms of government that concentrate powers in the office of the executive do break this relationship

how does parental leave affect fertility and return to work evidence from two natural experiments this paper analyzes the effects of changes in the duration of paid job protected parental leave on mothers higher order fertility and postbirth labor market careers identification is based on a major austrian reform increasing the duration of parental leave from one year to two years for any child born on or after july 1 1990 we find that mothers who give birth to their first child immediately after the reform have more second children than prereform mothers and that extended parental leave significantly reduces return to work employment and earnings also decrease in the short run but not in the long run fertility and work responses vary across the population in ways suggesting that both cash transfers and job protection are relevant increasing parental leave for a future child increases fertility strongly but leaves short run postbirth careers relatively unaffected partially reversing the 1990 extension a second 1996 reform improves employment and earnings while compressing the time between births

gendering the varieties of capitalism a study of occupational segregation by sex in advanced industrial societies this article explores the unintended gendered consequences of employment protection and vocational training systems it develops a micrologic of skill investment by workers and employers to identify the mechanism by which specific skills become disadvantageous for women the central claim of the article is that institutions that encourage male investment in specific skills exacerbate occupational sex segregation the article finds that coordinated market economies because of their robust institutional protection of male skill investments are generally more sex segregating than are liberal market economies the empirical section provides cross sectional analyses of advanced industrial countries

the dynamic eects of monetary policy a structural factor model approach we use the structural factor model proposed by forni giannone lippi and reichlin 2007 to study the eects of monetary policy the advantage with respect to the traditional vector autoregression model is that we can exploit information from a large data set made up of 112 us monthly macroeconomic series monetary policy shocks are identified using a standard recursive scheme in which the impact eects

external shocks u s monetary policy and macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging markets estimated structural vars show that external shocks are an important source of macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging markets furthermore u s monetary policy shocks affect interest rates and the exchange rate in a typical emerging market quickly and strongly the price level and real output in a typical emerging market respond to u s monetary policy shocks by more than the price level and real output in the u s itself these findings are consistent with the idea that when the u s sneezes emerging markets catch a cold at the same time u s monetary policy shocks are not important for emerging markets relative to other kinds of external shocks

the economic consequences of parental leave mandates lessons from europe this study investigates the economic consequences of rights to paid parental leave in nine european countries over the 1969 through 1993 period since women use virtually all parental leave in most nations men constitute a reasonable comparison group and most of the analysis examines how changes in paid leave affect the gap between female and male labor market outcomes the employment to populations ratios of women in their prime childbearing years are also compared with those of corresponding aged men and older females parental leave is associated with increases in women s employment but with reductions in their relative wages at extended durations

money for nothing universal child care and maternal employment abstract the strong correlation between child care and maternal employment rates has led previous research to conclude that affordable and readily available child care is a driving force both of cross country differences in maternal employment and of its rapid growth over the last decades we analyze a staged expansion of subsidized child care in norway our precise and robust difference in differences estimates reveal that there is little if any causal effect of subsidized child care on maternal employment despite a strong correlation instead of increasing mothers labor supply the new subsidized child care mostly crowds out informal child care arrangements suggesting a significant net cost of the child care subsidies

women in the one percent gender dynamics in top income positions a growing body of research documents the importance of studying households in the top one percent of u s income distribution because they control enormous resources however little is known about

changes in the labor supply behavior of married women 1980 2000 using march current population survey data we investigate married women s labor supply from 1980 to 2000 we find a large rightward shift in their labor supply function for annual hours in the 1980s with little shift in the 1990s these shifts account for most of the slowdown in the growth of labor supply during this period a major development was the dramatic decrease in the responsiveness of married women s labor supply to their own and husbands wages their own wage elasticity fell by 50 56 while their cross wage elasticity fell by 38 47 in absolute value

the size and scope of government comparative politics with rational politicians we try to demonstrate how economists may engage in research on comparative politics relating the size and composition of government spending to the political system a downsian model of electoral competition and forward looking voting indicates that majoritarian as opposed to proportional elections increase competition between parties by focusing it into some key marginal districts this leads to less public goods less rents for politicians more redistribution and larger government a model of legislative bargaining and backward looking voting indicates that presidential as opposed to parliamentary regimes increase competition between both politicians and voters this leads to less public goods less rents for politicians less redistribution and smaller government we confront these predictions with cross country data from around 1990 controlling for economic and social determinants of government spending we nd strong and robust support for the prediction that the size of government is smaller under presidential regimes and weaker support for the prediction that majoritarian elections are associated with less public goods

examining asymmetries in the transmission of monetary policy in the euro area evidence from a mixed cross section global var model abstract i estimate the transmission of a common euro area monetary policy shock across individual euro area economies to do so i develop a global var model in which all euro area economies are included individually while at the same time their common monetary policy is modelled as a function of euro area aggregate output growth and inflation the results suggest that the transmission of monetary policy across euro area economies displays asymmetries and that in line with economic theory these are driven by differences in economies structural characteristics in particular euro area economies in which a higher share of aggregate output is accounted for by sectors servicing interest rate sensitive demand exhibit a stronger transmission of monetary policy to real activity similarly even though the evidence is less conclusive euro area economies which feature more real wage and or fewer unemployment rigidities also appear to display a stronger transmission of monetary policy to real activity

female labor supply why is the united states falling behind abstract in 1990 the us had the sixth highest female labor participation rate among 22 oecd countries by 2010 its rank had fallen to seventeenth we find that the expansion of family friendly p

trade and business cycle synchronization in oecd countries a re examination this paper re examines the relationship between trade intensity and business cycle synchronization for 21 oecd countries in the period 1970 2003 instead of using instrumental variables we estimate a multivariate model including variables capturing specialization and similarity of economic policies we confirm that trade intensity affects synchronization but the effect is much smaller than previously reported other factors like specialization and convergence in monetary and fiscal policies have a similar impact on business cycle synchronization as trade intensity the effect of trade on synchronization is not driven by outliers however the impact of trade on synchronization is not robust across deciles c 2007 elsevier b v all rights reserved

low skilled immigration and work fertility tradeoffs among high skilled us natives fertility and labor force participation are simultaneous outcomes of a single time allocation decision empirical work by economists has largely focused on identifying a causal effect of childbearing on employment using a variety of mechanisms to provide variation in fertility that is exogenous to other determinants of family and work decisions however a parallel demographic literature is devoted to understanding the extent and determinants of the tradeoff or role incompatibility that women face in their allocation of time between working and parenting karin l brewster and ronald r rindfuss 2000 the most often used measure of role incompatibility is the correlation between fertility and female labor force participation flfp cross country research focuses on the substantial differences in family policies child care availability unemployment rates stability of labor contracts and gender norms that may result in international differences in the correlation between childbearing and work brewster and rindfuss 2000 alicia adsera 2004 although numerous studies continue to document a negative individual level relationship between childbearing and flfp the within country correlation between the two has weakened substantially in the past 50 years especially in the united states henriette engelhardt tomas kogel and alexia prskawetz 2004 we argue that a partial explanation for this phenomenon is the steady stream of low skilled immigration which increased the affordability of child rearing for high skilled us natives we start by writing a statistical model that allows the fertility flfp correlation a macro concept to be interpreted in terms of individual fertility and work decisions we then examine variation across us metropolitan areas over time to assess the degree to which low skilled mostly hispanic immigrant inflows attenuated the negative correlation between childbearing and flfp among college educated non hispanic natives this differentiation by skill and ethnicity allows us to draw on a commonly used instrumental variables approach to isolate a causal channel of influence of immigrants on the outcomes of natives via the cost of local household services finally we describe how our estimates of the effect of low skilled immigration on the correlation coefficient can be used to calculate concrete impacts on joint childbearing and labor force participation outcomes

comparative politics and public finance we propose a model with micropolitical foundations to contrast different political regimes compared to a parliamentary regime the institutions of a presidential congressional regime produce fewer incentives for legislative cohesion but more separation of powers these differences are reflected in the size and composition of government spending a parliamentary regime has redistribution toward a majority less underprovision of public goods and more rents to politicians a presidential congressional regime has redistribution toward powerful minorities more underprovision of public goods but less rents to politicians the size of government is smaller under a presidential regime this last prediction is consistent with cross country data

does the labour supply of wives respond to husbands wages canadian evidence from micro data and grouped data using micro data and grouped data we assess the extent to which canadian wives adjusted their labour supply in response to changes in husbands wages during the period 1980 2000 grouped data parameters based on weighted least squares and the unbiased error in variables estimator developed by devereux 2004 2007a b yield cross wage elasticities that are substantially higher in absolute value than those derived from ols regressions run on micro data both grouping estimators indicate that the labour supply of canadian wives responded strongly to changes in husbands wages during the 1980s for the 1990s our estimates of wives cross wage elasticity display greater dispersion a l aide de micro donnees et de donnees groupees on etablit jusqu a quel point les epouses canadiennes ont ajuste leur offre de travail en reponse aux changements dans les salaires de leurs epoux au cours de la periode 1980 2000 les parametres pour les donnees groupees derives par la methode des moindres carres ponderes et de l estimateur developpe par devereux 2004 2007a b engendrent des elasticites croisees qui sont substantiellement plus grandes en termes absolus que ceux derives par la methode des moindres carres ordinaires en utilisant des micro donnees les deux estimations montrent que l offre de travail des epouses canadiennes a repondu fortement aux changements dans les salaires des epoux au cours des annees 80 pour les annees 90 les evaluations des elasticites croisees des salaires montrent une plus grande dispersion

the choice of municipal government structure and public expenditures numerous empirical studies have attempted to measure the effect of varying government structures on public expenditures i argue that these prior may have produced biased estimates as they are predicated on the assumption that government structures are exogenous

monetary policy and rational asset price bubbles i examine the impact of alternative monetary policy rules on a rational asset price bubble through the lens of an olg model with nominal rigidities a systematic increase in interest rates in response to a growing bubble is shown to enhance the uctuations in the latter

city level analysis of the effect of political regimes on public good provision this paper uses u s city level data on five public expenditure categories to test empirically whether the form of local government affects the amount of public good provision this also serves as an empirical test of a theory of national politics that predicts higher provision of public good in parliamentary than in presidential regimes the robust results indicate that at the city level the mayor council form of government provides significantly more public good than the council manager form of government for two of the public expenditure categories and at the national level presidential regimes provide more public good than do parliamentary regimes

the determination of local public expenditures and the principal and agent relation a case study the principal and agent relationship is important in the public sector there elected or appointed representatives act on behalf of the citizens of their jurisdictions this paper examines the importance of the budget referendum which allows the principals to approve or disapprove the proposal of a set of agents in the context of local public expenditure decisions we test the null hypothesis that the institution of referendum when compared to a nonreferendum institution does not lead to significantly different expenditure behavior

national family policies and mothers employment how earnings inequality shapes policy effects across and within countries although researchers generally agree that national family policies play a role in shaping mothers employment there is considerable debate about whether how and why policy effects vary across co

changes in relative wages and family labor supply the large changes in relative wages that occurred during the 1980s provide fertile ground for studying the behavioral responses of married couples to the wage changes of husbands and wives i find estimates of own wage and cross wage elasticities for men that are very small the own wage elasticity for women is positive and the cross wage elasticity for women suggests a strong negative response of female labor supply to changes in their husband s wages family labor supply behavior determines how changes in individual wage rates translate into family earnings changes the responses of women to changes in their husband s wages attenuated somewhat the increases in individual wage inequality at the family level the results suggest that the earnings of the wives of low income men would actually have fallen over the decade if women s labor supply did not respond to changes in their husbands wages however assortative mating implies that wage changes of husbands and wives are correlated and so family earnings inequality still grew during the decade of the 1980s

us monetary policy and the euro area abstract this study documents empirically that contractionary us monetary policy may generate short term expansionary spillover effects in individual euro area ea member countries economic activity increases mainly via the trade channel also domestic credit and stock markets expand highlighting the importance of the financial channel however the international repercussions are transitory and distributed unevenly within the ea the effect diminishes as ea interest rates increase with a few quarters delay while the effects are heterogenous and rather large before 1999 responses become more homogeneous and smaller in size after the implementation of the euro still country specific asymmetries remain

family policies wage structures and gender gaps sources of earnings inequality in 20 countries this study uncovers an unexpected effect of family friendly policies on women s economic attainments using hierarchical linear models the analysis combines individual level data obtained from th

the impact of government structure on local public expenditures though the relationship between local government structure and expenditure has received considerable attention there is little consensus as to how the features of representative government affect local expenditure an exception is city council size which has consistently been found to be positively related to spending previous results rely on cross sectional estimation which may be subject to omitted variable bias this paper analyzes three components of municipal governments the form of government the size of the city council and the election method of city councilors once fixed effects estimation is employed the positive relationship between city council size and expenditure disappears