fertility risk in the life cycle in this paper i study fertility decisions of women in the u s economy with special emphasis on the timing of births and abortions over the life cycle given the policy debate regarding abortion availability along with empirical evidence on its positive impact on women outcomes understanding the fertility process in a broad sense should help guide the discussion in this paper i present a life cycle model of consumption savings and fertility decisions in an environment with uninsurable income shocks and imperfect fertility control my model presents a unified framework in which opportunity costs of child rearing as well as technological restrictions in the form of contraception effectiveness have roles to understand lifetime fertility the model extends important earlier work on contraceptive decisions by women in the sense that it allows for stochastic fertility outcomes and is able to account for the interplay between asset accumulation and fertility decisions observed in the data

marriage and other risky assets a portfolio approach we study the joint impact of gender and marital status on financial decisions first we test the hypothesis that marriage represents in a portfolio framework a sort of safe asset and that this effect is stronger for women controlling for a number of observable characteristics we show that single women have a lower propensity to invest in risky assets than married females and males second we show that the differential behavior of single women evolves over time reflecting the increasing incidence of divorce and the expansion of female labor market participation in particular towards the end of our sample period we observe a reduction in the gap between women with different family status which can be attributed to the gradual erosion of the perception of marriage as a sort of safe asset our results therefore suggest that the differential behavior of single vs married women can be explained by the evolution of gender roles in society even after controlling for differential risk attitudes our empirical investigation is based on a dataset drawn from the 1989 2006 bank of italy survey of household income and wealth

accounting for the timing of first marriage among first marriages in the united states grooms are on average 1 7 years older than their brides traditionally this fact is explained by sex differences in income we use a general equilibrium overlapping generations search model economy to show instead that sex differences in fecundity are essential to account for the age gap at first marriage whereas sex differences in income play a secondary role our model economy also accounts for other facts on the timing of first marriages that the literature has overlooked

marry your like assortative mating and income inequality has there been an increase in positive assortative mating does assortative mating contribute to household income inequality data from the united states census bureau suggests there has been a rise in assortative mating additionally assortative mating aects household income inequality in particular if matching in 2005 between husbands and wives had been random instead of the pattern observed in the data then the gini coe cient would have fallen from the observed 0 43 to 0 34 so that income inequality would be smaller thus assortative mating is important for income inequality the high level of married female labor force participation in 2005 is important for this

house prices and marital stability we investigate the effect of house price changes on divorce using data for 1991 2010 from the current population survey and the federal housing finance agency our findings suggest that changing house prices significantly affect the share of a cohort that is divorced and that these effects are asymmetric with respect to housing gains versus losses in addition we find differential effects for groups that are more likely to be homeowners versus renters some of this evidence is consistent with homeowners being locked into their homes and hence marriages by increased transactions costs in down markets

transmission network cost allocation based on equivalent bilateral exchanges this paper presents a novel methodology for allocating the cost of a transmission network to its users based on the principle of equivalent bilateral exchanges which states that after all physical laws governing the flow of power have been met each demand is assigned a fraction of each generation and each generator is assigned a fraction of each demand in a uniform manner transmission cost allocation based on this principle presents several advantages namely independence from the choice of the slack bus recognition of counter flows and transmission use charges that are stable and always positive

the impact of divorce laws on marriage specific capital this article considers how divorce law alters the incentives for couples to invest in their marriage focusing on the impact of unilateral divorce laws on investments in new marriages differences across states between 1970 and 1980 provide useful quasi experimental variation with which to consider incentives to invest in several types of marriagespecific capital spouse s education children household specialization and home ownership i find that adoption of unilateral divorce regardless of the prevailing property division laws reduces investment in all types of marriage specific capital considered except home ownership in contrast results for home ownership depend on the underlying property division laws

land use planning and the housing market a comparative review of the uk and the usa this paper provides a review of some of the key articles and research examining the relationship between planning regulation and its impact on the housing market in the uk and the us in both count

fertility and childlessness in the united states we develop a theory of fertility distinguishing its intensive margin from its extensive margin the deep parameters are identified using facts from the 1990 us census i fertility of mothers decreases with education ii childlessness exhibits a u shaped relationship with education iii the relationship between marriage rates and education is hump shaped for women and increasing for men we estimate that 2 5 percent of women were childless because of poverty and 8 1 percent because of high opportunity cost of childrearing over time historical trends in total factor productivity and in education led to a u shaped response in childlessness rates while fertility of mothers decreased

divorce risk wages and working wives a quantitative life cycle analysis of female labour force participation this article develops a quantitative life cycle model to study the increase in married women s labour force participation lfp we calibrate the model to match key life cycle statistics for the 1935 cohort and use it to assess the changed environment faced by the 1955 cohort we find that a higher divorce probability and changes in wage structure are each able to explain a large proportion of the lfp increase higher divorce risk increases lfp not because the latter contributes to higher marital assets or greater labour market experience however instead it is the result of conflicting spousal preferences towards the adjustment of marital consumption in the face of increased divorce risk the dramatic increase in the second half of the twentieth century in married women s labour force participation lfp has given rise to a large and growing literature that explores the roles of the multiple forces that led to this evolution some explanations have emphasised technological change in the household greenwood et al 2005 or in medical contraceptive technology goldin and katz 2002 albanesi and olivetti 2009a b knowles 2007 other explanations have emphasised changes in the wage

evidence on the benefits of alternative mortgage products alternative mortgage products have been identified by many as culprits in the financial crisis however because of their lower initial mortgage payments relative to loan amount they may be a valuable tool for households that expect higher and more certain future labor income and that wish to smooth consumption over the life cycle using u k household level panel data this paper provides evidence in support of this hypothesis and highlights other important benefits of alternative mortgages including portfolio diversification tax benefits and a reduction in the transaction costs incurred in housing transactions

planning and housing supply in two speed britain modelling local market outcomes summary economic research on uk housing markets has only recently got to grips with measuring and modelling the impact of planning and other public interventions although their importance has long been recognised in theory the interurban panel dataset utilised in this study does represent a step forward by permitting more robust econometric estimation and by incorporating a wider more balanced range of determinant factors a coherent set of relationships governing the key market outcomes house prices new building migration and vacancies can be established the modelling framework is used to explore differences in behavioural responses between markets in high and low demand states simulations are used to track the impact on market outcomes of different policy strategies applied in different types of locality supply measures needed to achieve national targets for house price growth reduction are assessed measures acting on both demand side and supply side variables in areas of high and low demand are compared these suggest that output is more sensitive than price to policies and that quite strong concerted policies would be needed to impact significantly on the major market imbalances currently seen

marriage and divorce changes and their driving forces the family is not a static institution in recent decades marriage rates have fallen divorce rates have risen and the defining characteristics of marriage have changed the economic approach to the family seeks to explain these trends by reference to models that can also explain how and why families form gary becker s 1981 treatise on the family proposed a theory based on production complementarities in which husband and wife specialize in the market and domestic spheres respectively production complementarities also arise in the production and rearing of one s own children however production complementarities at least as initially described are decreasingly central to modern family life increased longevity and declining fertility mean that most of one s adult life is spent without one s own children in the household also the rise in marital formation at older ages including remarriage means that many families form with no intention of producing children moreover increases in female labor force participation suggest that household specialization has either declined or at least taken on a different meaning these changes have come about as what is produced in the home has been dramatically altered both by the emergence of labor saving technology in the home and by the development of service industries that allow much of what was once provided by specialized homemakers to be purchased in the market the availabil

housing decision with divorce risk we build a realistically calibrated life cycle model of housing decisions under divorce risk as observed in the data our model predicts the recent increase in divorce rates leads to reduced homeownership rates the event of a divorce negatively affects homeownership and this effect is long lasting the risk of a divorce triggers a precautionary savings motive however this motive is weaker when individuals can invest in owner occupied homes because homeowners higher savings partially substitute for precautionary savings when young the larger asset accumulation due to divorce risk induced precautionary savings enables households to buy homes earlier whereas the presence of transaction costs leads to reduced homeownership for middle aged and older households when divorce risk goes up

a dynamic model of housing demand estimation and policy implications a dynamic model of housing demand using data from the panel study of income dynamics psid we specify estimate and simulate a dynamic structural model of housing demand our model generalizes previous applied econometric work by incorporating realistic features of the housing market including non convex adjustment costs from buying and selling a home credit constraints from minimum downpayment requirements and uncertainty about the evolution of incomes and home prices we argue that these features are critical for capturing salient features of housing demand observed in the psid after estimating the model we use it to simulate how consumer behavior responds to house price and income declines as well as tightening credit these experiments are motivated by the u s recession starting in december of 2007 that saw large falls in home prices large negative income shocks for many households and tightening credit standards in the short run relatively few households adjust their housing stock households respond instead by reducing non housing consumption and reducing wealth because they wish to avoid losing their home and the associated adjustment costs households that adjust in the short run are those hit with a series of bad shocks such as a negative income shock and a home price decline a larger proportion of households do adjust their consumption in the long run increasing their housing stock since housing is less expensive however such changes may occur several years after the shocks listed above

the effects of exposure to better neighborhoods on children new evidence from the moving to opportunity experiment the moving to opportunity mto experiment offered randomly selected families housing vouchers to move from high poverty housing projects to lower poverty neighborhoods we analyze mto s impacts on children s long term outcomes using tax data we find that moving to a lower poverty neighborhood when young before age 13 increases college attendance and earnings and reduces single parenthood rates moving as an adolescent has slightly negative impacts perhaps because of disruption effects the decline in the gains from moving with the age when children move suggests that the duration of exposure to better environments during childhood is an important determinant of children s long term outcomes jel i31 i38 j13 r23 r38

families as shocks in this paper we show the quantitative importance of the process that determines changes in family composition to determine the main macroeconomic magnitudes we do so by modelling family type as a stochastic process that affects households in a way similar to shocks to earnings agents respond to these process by optimally choosing savings we show that the size of savings differs dramatically depending on the details of the stochastic process the model is quantitative its fundamental parameters are estimated using u s data

construction elasticities and land availability a two stage least squares model of housing supply using the variable elasticity approach this paper uses data at english local authority district level to construct a simultaneous equation model of housing construction that compares elasticities of supply between two cross sectional periods 1988 boom and 1992 slump using the variable elasticity approach econometric issues raised by earlier supply studies are discussed and tested for the paper also discusses the rationale for and tests the existence of a backward bending supply relationship and finds that supply is concave in both periods and bends backwards during the boom evidence of a structural break between boom and bust is found producing average price elasticities of supply noticeably smaller in the boom 0 58 than in the slump 1 03 with considerable variation across disticts land supply elasticities are found to be more stable over time and marginally greater in the boom 0 75 than in the slump 0 71 the paper also calculates second partial derivatives based on the whole demand supply system to obtain estimates

the risk of divorce and household saving behavior we analyze the causal impact of an increase in the risk of marital dissolution on the saving behavior of married couples we use the legalization of divorce in ireland in 1996 as an exogenous shock to the risk of divorce we propose several comparison groups unaffected by the law change that allow us to use a difference in differences approach our findings suggest that the legalization of divorce led to a significant increase in the propensity to save by married individuals which is consistent with individuals saving more as a response to the increase in the probability of marital breakup