an empirical analysis of life cycle fertility and female labor supply this paper examines us household fertility and female labor supply over the life cycle using data from the panel study of income dynamics the authors investigate how maternal time inputs and market expenditures on offspring as well as the benefits they yield their parents vary with ages of offspring and influence female labor supply and contraceptive behavior the econometric framework combines a female labor supply model and a contraceptive choice index function it also accounts for the fact that conceptions are not perfectly controllable events using longitudinal data on married couples the authors estimate these equations and test alternative specifications of the technologies governing child care the findings suggest that while parents cannot perfectly control conceptions variations in child care costs do affect life cycle spacing of births furthermore the results demonstrate the gains of modeling the linkages between female labor supply and fertility behavior at the household level authors modified

identifying the response of fertility to financial incentives summary while using financial incentives to increase fertility has become relatively common the effects of such policies are difficult to assess we propose an identification strategy that relies on the fact that the variation in wages induces variation in benefits and tax credits among comparable households we implement our approach by estimating a discrete choice model of female participation and fertility using individual data from the french labor force survey and a detailed representation of the french tax benefit system our results suggest that financial incentives have had a significant effect on fertility decisions in france as an example we simulate the effects of an additional unconditional child credit of 150 euros per month the effects are strongest for the third child copyright 2013 john wiley sons ltd

fair trade towards an economics of virtue over the past 10 years the sales of fair trade goods particularly those carrying the fair trade labelling organizations international flo certification mark have grown exponentially academic interest in fair trade has also grown significantly over the past decade with researchers analysing the model from a wide range of theoretical perspectives whilst fair trade is generally acknowledged as a new supply chain model it has tended to be studied at the micro organisational level rather than at the macro systems level as a consequence its wider impact as institutional innovation at the field level appears to have been under theorised so far in order to address this research gap this article uses a neo institutionalist perspective to analyse fair trade not simply as a new exchange model working within existing organisational and economic structures but rather as an agent of institutional entrepreneurship at and beyond the field level from this latter perspective fair trade brings a new set of transformational meanings to extant exchange and consumption models and reforms fields of economic exchange by disrupting and then re assembling key institutional elements around modern consumption to roll back commodity fetishism and reconnect consumers and producers the type of institutional change driven by fair trade can be seen as a form of social entrepreneurship

fair trade standards corporate participation and social movement responses in the united states this article examines the development of and contestation over the standards for certified fair trade with particular attention to the u s context it charts fair trade s rapid growth in the united states since the 1999 advent of formal certification explores the controversies generated by the strategy of market mainstreaming in the sector and focuses on five key issues that have generated particularly heated contention within the u s fair trade movement it offers a theoretical framework based in the literatures on agrifood systems social movements and public choice economics for understanding the corporate response to alternative markets such as fair trade the article suggests a typology of responses by social movement actors to this increased corporate participation and assesses the relevance of the u s case for the future prospects of fair trade both in other national contexts and as an international movement

the dissipation of minimum wage gains for workers through labor labor substitution evidence from the los angeles living wage ordinance author affiliation david fairris department of economics university of california riverside ca 92521 usa david fairris ucr edu corresponding authorleon fernandez bujanda oficina de investigaciones economicas banco central de venezuela av urdaneta esq carmelitas edf sede piso 2 caracas dc venezuela lefernan bcv org ve acknowledgment we have received helpful comments from philip babcock charlie brown david card eve caroli arin dube shelly lundberg mindy marks david neumark and participants in presentations at the society of labor economists uc berkeley ucla and pse in paris we acknowledge financial support from the ford foundation and the university of california labor and employment research fund and research support of various kinds from researchers at the los angeles alliance for a new economy 1 introductioneconomic theory suggests that firms will replace low skill workers with high skill workers if the two are substitutes in production and the wages of low skill workers increase as the result of a minimum wage labor labor substitution may also take place along dimensions other than skill if for example employers have a taste for discrimination and the minimum wage reduces the wage premium they must pay for favored personal characteristics of workers if affected firms replace low skill workers with high skill workers following enactment of a wage minimum the initial benefits of the regulation for workers at these firms will be dissipated over time as the wage gains for new hires are less than for members of the original workforce a similar dissipation of wage gains will occur if employers replace workers that are discriminated against in the labor market with those that are not most theoretical depictions of labor labor substitution focus on employer initiated causes it may result from changes in firms demand for worker skills from employer efforts to dissipate worker minimum wage rents by requiring greater work effort or less absenteeism from workers and by seeking workers that better match these new employer goals or from employers invoking their taste for discrimination however successful labor substitution rests on workers supply decisions as well indeed such substitution could result solely from labor supply effects if for example firms were to hire nonselectively from an altered more highly skilled or otherwise favored applicant pool which is brought on by the higher wage the empirical literature on the employment effects of wage minimums has found little employment loss among affected jobs or more highly impacted worker populations such as teenagers brown 1999 this suggests that there may be little labor labor substitution across broad skill occupational categories for example adults for teenagers workers with some college experience for high school graduates or backhoe operators for ditch diggers 1 however labor labor substitution may still take place along more refined dimensions of workers skills abowd and kilingsworth 1981 for example neumark and wascher 1996 find evidence that minimum wages lead firms to substitute away from younger teenagers and toward older more experienced teenagers labor substitution following a minimum wage may dissipate the initial wage gains for workers empirical evidence suggests however that just as in the case of unions card 1996 the rent dissipation is by no means complete it is now well established empirically that a spike exists in the wage distribution around the relevant minimum wage card and krueger 1995 dinardo fortin and lemieux 1996 suggesting that the wages of low skill workers are indeed affected by wage mandates 2 moreover job queues exist for minimum wage jobs suggesting that economic rents are earned by low wage workers in these positions holzer katz and krueger 1991

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

career interruptions and subsequent earnings a reexamination using swedish data this paper reexamines the link between career interruptions and subsequent wages using a rich new swedish dataset we are able to disaggregate time out of work into several components regressing

ἐμπάθɛια empatheia and caritas the role of religion in fair trade consumption there is much still to learn about the nature of fair trade consumers in light of the pope s encyclical caritas in veritate this article sought to advance the current understanding by investigating the role of religion in fair trade consumption in this study fair trade consumers and non consumers across many religions as well as the non religious described their consumption of fair trade products as well as the use of their religious beliefs in their purchase behavior it appears that the non religious are slightly more inclined toward buying fair trade products of the religious observers studied buddhists have a greater propensity to buy fair trade the relationship between religion and fair trade consumption is complex in that religious affiliation group membership alone is not enough to encourage members to buy fair trade rather it is the use of religious beliefs as a criterion in consumption behavior that linked religion to fair trade consumption

fertility and the personal exemption implicit pronatalist policy in the united states the personal exemption in the us provides households with an income tax subsidy for each child this paper uses aggregate time series data for the us from 1913 to 1984 to estimate the impact of the tax value of the personal exemption on the aggregate birth rate the empirical results indicate that the personal exemption has a positive and significant impact on fertility and this result is robust to a variety of specifications the us therefore pursues an implicit pronatalist policy through the income tax and the empirical results indicate that the recent tax reform act of 1986 will on average increase this subsidy for fertility authors

why people don t take their concerns about fair trade to the supermarket the role of neutralisation this article explores how neutralisation can explain people s lack of commitment to buying fair trade ft products even when they identify ft as an ethical concern it examines the theoretical tenets of neutralisation theory and critically assesses its applicability to the purchase of ft products exploratory research provides illustrative examples of neutralisation techniques being used in the ft consumer context a conceptual framework and research propositions delineate the role of neutralisation in explaining the attitude behaviour discrepancies evident in relation to consumers ft purchase behaviour providing direction for further research that will generate new knowledge of consumers ft purchase behaviour and other aspects of ethical consumer behaviour

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

the fair trade movement parameters issues and future research although fair trade has been in existence for more than 40 years discussion in the business and business ethics literature of this unique trading and campaigning movement between southern producers and northern buyers and consumers has been limited this paper seeks to redress this deficit by providing a description of the characteristics of fair trade including definitional issues market size and segmentation and the key organizations it discusses fair trade from southern producer and northern trader and consumer perspectives and highlights the key issues that currently face the fair trade movement it then identifies an initial research agenda to be followed up in subsequent papers

parental leave a policy evaluation of the swedish daddy month reform abstract many governments are making attempts to increase fathers share of parental leave in order to correct for unequal labor market outcomes using swedish data we ask whether fathers can be encouraged to take more parental leave in order to mitigate the negative consequences of mothers career interruptions the unique data stem from a reform of parental leave resulting in a clean natural experiment data comprise all children born before control group and after treatment group the date of implementation of the reform in cohorts of up to 27 000 newborns mothers and fathers we find strong short term effects of the incentives on male parental leave but no behavioral effects in the household fathers in the treatment group do not take larger shares of the leave taken for care of sick children which is our measure for household work we also investigate a second data set on fathers and mothers long term wages and employment without finding evidence for substantial effects of the reform

job queues and wages this paper uses job applications data to investigate the relationship between job queues and wage differentials the main finding is that openings for jobs that pay the minimum wage attract more job applicants than jobs that pay either slightly more or slightly less than the minimum wage this spike in the job application rate distribution suggests that ex ante rents generated for employees by an above market level minimum wage are not completely dissipated by reductions in nonwage benefits in addition we find that highly unionized firms large firms and firms in high wage industries tend to receive relatively many job applicants for openings

is there an effect of incremental welfare benefits on fertility behavior a look at the family cap this analysis exploits the variation across states in the timing of policy implementation to determine if family cap policies lead to a reduction in births to women aged 15 to 34 vital statistics birth data for the years 1989 to 1998 offer no such evidence the data reject a decline in births of more than one percent the finding is robust to multiple specification checks the data also reject large declines in higher order births among demographic groups with high welfare participation rates

type of employer and fertility of working women does working in the public sector or in a large private firm matter this work investigates how fertility rates of working women have been influenced by employer characteristics public versus private sector and small versus large firms and features of the employment contracts using a representative sample of italian working women in the last 30 years of the twentieth century in particular we find that women working in the public sector have a higher probability of having a child during a working spell than women working in the private sector furthermore women working in large private sector firms who enjoy stronger employment protection have a higher probability of having a child than those working in smaller firms in turn more stable contracts also increase the likelihood of having a child during a working spell results are robust to controlling for individual unobserved heterogeneity and for the possible endogeneity of working in the public sector copyright oxford university press

taxes and the timing of births because the tax savings of having a child are a realized only if the birth takes place before midnight january 1 the incentives for the marginal birth are substantial using a sample of children from the national longitudinal survey of youth we find that the probability that a child is born in the last week of december rather than the first week of january is positively correlated with tax benefits we estimate that increasing the tax benefit of having a child by 500 raises the probability of having the child in the last week of december by 26 9 percent

the impact of the minimum wage if workers can adjust effort abstract in traditional models a binding minimum wage creates a excess supply of low skilled workers for minimum wage jobs employment falls and some jobs are reallocated from high to low rent workers this disequilibrium cannot persist competition to secure the property rights to now scarce jobs undoes most of the effects of the minimum wage workers who attach the highest value to the jobs are willing to work harder to keep them marginal workers are squeezed out of the market as high rent workers ratchet up effort level this process erodes the rent conferred by the minimum wage but also increases the value of marginal product which reduces the size of the employment effect the minimum wage confers more money income on low skilled workers and creates some distortion in the optimum combination of wage rate and effort level under plausible conditions the minimum wage has little effect on rent employment output and profits

causal effects of paternity leave on children and parents reserving a share of the parental leave period for fathers is considered necessary in order to induce fathers to take leave and to increase men s participation in child rearing we investigate how a parental leave reform directed towards fathers affected leave taking and in turn children s and parents long term outcomes a paternal leave quota greatly increases the share of men taking paternity leave we find evidence that children s school performance improves as a result particularly in families where the father has higher education than the mother we find no evidence that paternity leave counters the traditional allocation of parents labor supply

women s career choices social norms and child care policies our model explains the observed gender specific patterns of career and child care choices through endogenous social norms we study how these norms interact with the gender wage gap we show that via the social norm a couple s child care and career choices impose an externality on other couples so that the laissez faire is inefficient we use our model to study the design and effectiveness of three commonly used policies we find that child care subsidies and women quotas can be effective tools to mitigate or eliminate the externality parental leave however may even intensify the externality and decrease welfare

the missing link between corporate social responsibility and consumer trust the case of fair trade products this paper investigates the link between the consumer perception that a company is socially oriented and the consumer intention to buy products marketed by that company we suggest that this link exists when at least two conditions prevail 1 the products sold by that company comply with ethical and social requirements 2 the company has an acknowledged commitment to protect consumer rights and interests to test these hypotheses we conducted a survey among the clients of retail chains offering fair trade products the results show that socially oriented companies can successfully leverage their reputation to market products with high symbolic values

legal minimum wages and employment duration 1 introductionthe effect of a legal minimum wage on employee turnover is an important consideration when evaluating the effectiveness of a minimum wage policy if an increase in the minimum wage results in greater turnover then firms hiring costs are increased and the direct benefit to workers who are paid the minimum wage may be lessened a reduction in turnover on the other hand would mean more stability for employers and workers though access to minimum wage jobs may be reduced for job seekers despite the recent proliferation of studies on the effects of legal minimum wages their impact on turnover has received relatively little attention from economists this may be due to the fact that much of the literature focuses on the teen labor market where there is more churning than in the adult labor market gardecki and neumark 1998 the fact remains however that a significant proportion of workers hired at the minimum wage are adults and the effects of the minimum wage onthe turnover hazard are understudied 1standard economic theory suggests that a price floor such as a minimum wage results in fewer transactions and in rents for those suppliers who manage to sell in the context of the labor market this means workers in minimum wage jobs may be expected to receive rents and therefore may be less likely to quit another possible consequence of a minimum wage arises from imperfect information in the labor market combined with heterogeneity among workers and jobs prior to the start of an employment relationship the worker does not know all the relevant aspects of the job and the employer does not know all the important characteristics of the worker as a result in the absence of a mandated minimum wage job applicants may use wage offers to infer information about the nonpecuniary aspects of jobs thereby facilitating the matching process a binding minimum wage compresses the wage distribution so that a single wage is associated with a larger array of jobs this means that the wage offer becomes a poor indicator of a job s nonwage characteristics which leads to a higher proportion of poor matches and consequently more turnover this paper uses data on young men and women in the 1988 1994 rounds of the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy to estimate the relationship between the minimum wage and the turnover hazard the extent to which the minimum wage binds varies across states both because of differences in state laws and because of differences in wage levels across states we exploit this variation to estimate turnover hazards as a function of the ratio of the nominal minimum wage to the state median wage this variable measures the extent to which the minimum wage binds we find some evidence that in states where the minimum wage is low relative to the state s median wage men hired at the minimum wage have lower employee initiated separation hazards than other low wage workers as the minimum wage rises relative to the prevailing median wage that is as the minimum wage becomes more binding men hired at the minimum wage are increasingly likely to leave their jobs at any given duration when the minimum wage is high relative to the median wage we find that men hired at the minimum wage have significantly higher employee initiated separation hazards than other low wage workers we interpret these findings as evidence that while rents may accrue to minimum wage workers the job matching process is undermined when the minimum wage binds our results apply to the men in our sample but not to the women indeed for women we find no connection between employment duration and the starting wage rate though we do uncover some evidence that for women in low wage jobs employment duration is more elastic with respect to the presence of family friendly fringe benefits than it is for men the paper proceeds as follows the next section explores the possible reasons minimum wages would affect turnover and discusses the existing empirical and theoretical research on this topic

female labour supply and household employment shocks maternity leave as an insurance mechanism this paper investigates the role of unpaid maternity leave in providing household insurance against paternal employment shocks the main outcome is the timing of a mothers return to work after having a child exploiting the us family and medical leave act we find that mothers eligible for maternity leave speed up their return to work in response to a paternal shock with the conditional probability of being in work 49 higher than in households with no unpaid maternity leave further evidence is provided on the insurance role of unpaid maternity leave through i no significant interaction between paid maternity leave and the paternal shock and ii smoothing of consumption effects of the shock for households covered by unpaid leave

fair trade three key challenges for reaching the mainstream after nearly 20 years of work by activists fair trade a movement establishing alternative trading organizations to ensure minimal returns safe working conditions and environmentally sustainable production is now gaining steam with increasing awareness and availability across a variety of products however this article addresses several major remaining challenges a a lack of agreement about what fair trade really means and how it should be certified b uneven awareness and availability across different areas with marked differences between some parts of europe and north america that reflect more fundamental debates about distribution c larger questions about the extent of the potential contribution of fair trade to development under the current system including limitations on the number and types of workers affected and the fair trade focus on commodity goods

estimating welfare effects consistent with forward looking behavior part i lessons from a simulation exercise an extensive literature in economics seeks to determine the quantitative impact of welfare benefits on economic and demographic behaviors most studies adopt a static choice framework to motivate their empirical specifications the behaviors that are studied however have both immediate and long term consequences if potential welfare recipients are forward looking they will consider these long term consequences when making current decisions in this paper we investigate the implications of the existence of forward looking behavior for estimation methodology in the companion paper that follows we estimate the effect of welfare on those decisions adopting an empirical specification that is consistent with forward looking behavior and interpretable within that framework

mainstreaming and its discontents fair trade socially responsible investing and industry trajectories over time according to popular and academic accounts alternative trade initiatives such as fair trade organics forest certification and socially responsible investing sri almost invariably lose their oppositional stance and go mainstream that is they lose their alternative usually peripheral and often contrarian character in this paper i argue that this is not always the case and that the path to going mainstream is not always an unproblematic one i observe that while scholars have documented various aspects of specific alternative trade initiatives little comparative work has been done to theorize their different trajectories to advance the scholarship i compare two alternative trade movements fair trade and sri and develop three hypotheses the relation motivations hypothesis the material interests hypothesis and the organization of credibility hypothesis that explain why going mainstream has been so hotly contested in the fair trade movement but not the sri movement i articulate these hypotheses and evaluate their merits

econometric analysis of birth rate dynamics in britain the author presents an econometric model to estimate annual fluctuations in the birth rate in the united kingdom since 1950 the new model has been improved by 1 adding additional economic variables to the model particularly child allowances real house prices and following easterlin 1980 womens cohort size 2 using mens and womens net after tax wages rather than gross wages and 3 employing econometric techniques developed from the theory of cointegrated series to deal with the nonstationarity of most of the data excerpt

can maternity benefits have long term effects on childbearing evidence from soviet russia this paper quantifies the effects of russia s 1981 expansion in maternity benefits on completed childbearing the program provided one year of partially paid parental leave and a small cash transfe

direct and cross effects of employment protection the case of parental childcare i examine whether employment protection affects the willingness of working parents to provide childcare using a reform that made it easier for employers to dismiss workers in small firms i find that softer employment protection reduces the use of temporary parental leave among directly treated fathers in addition i find that households respond to an increase in the dismissal risk by reducing temporary parental leave for the indirectly treated spouse spousal labor supply can thus serve as informal insurance against adverse income shocks

a model for fair trade buying behaviour the role of perceived quantity and quality of information and of product specific attitudes in a sample of 615 belgians a model for fair trade buying behaviour was developed the impact of fair trade knowledge general attitudes towards fair trade attitudes towards fair trade products and the perception of the quality and quantity of fair trade information on the reported amount of money spent on fair trade products were assessed fair trade knowledge overall concern and scepticism towards fair trade and the perception of the perceived quantity and quality of fair trade information influence buying behaviour directly and indirectly through product attitudes interest in fair trade products price acceptability and product liking have a significant impact on fair trade buying behaviour product interest is the most important variable influencing buying behaviour implications for the campaigns of governments and for the marketing strategy of fair trade organisations are offered

do legal minimum wages create rents a re examination of the evidence the effects of minimum wage laws have interested economists for many years while much of the research regarding minimum wage laws has focused on its employment effects several economists have been concerned with the laws effects on the non pecuniary aspects of jobs there is disagreement in the literature as to whether minimum wage legislation creates rents in those jobs for which the law is a constraint several researchers have argued that firms will offset any rent created by the minimum wage by reducing the non wage aspects of the job 4 7 14 15 in a recent paper holzer katz and krueger 5 present evidence suggesting that employers do not completely offset the minimum wage they use information on application rates for job openings found in the employment opportunities pilot project data set eopp to test for the existence of rents on minimum wage jobs minimum wage jobs are found to have longer queues of applicants than other jobs ceteris paribus which suggests the existence of rents this paper presents additional tests of the existence of rents using the eopp data we find that workers who received starting wages equal to the minimum wage have a significantly higher probability of quitting than workers paid either less than or more than the minimum wage this result seems to contradict the findings of holzer katz and krueger regarding minimum wage jobs as we see it our findings support wessels 15 contention that since wages are more visible than non pecuniary aspects of compensation low wage workers mistakenly queue for minimum wage jobs thinking them more attractive than they are but then quit when reality sets in the paper is organized as follows section ii discusses the existing theoretical and empirical research regarding minimum wages section iii presents our empirical procedures section iv discusses the eopp data set and in section v we discuss our results finally in section vi we draw some tentative conclusions and discuss future research

two birds with one stone female labor supply fertility and market childcare abstract the correlation between the female labor force participation rate fpr and the total fertility rate tfr has switched from negative to positive in some developed countries in this paper we show how increasing the substitutability between maternal time and market childcare can raise both fpr and tfr and provide an explanation for the change in the tfr fpr correlation simulations of a life cycle model of married women s work and fertility decisions indicate that the fpr increases whereas the tfr is u shaped with regard to substitutability the dynamic relationship depends on the relative strength of behavioral and composition effects greater substitutability allows working women to have more children but it also attracts less productive women to enter the labor force who trade childbirths for labor supply the findings imply that raising substitutability to a sufficiently high level can achieve the two seemingly conflicting goals increasing female labor force participation and fertility rates

back to work parental benefits and mothers labor market outcomes in the medium run the authors estimate policy impacts of a generous parental benefit in germany by using a natural experiment and german census data they estimate policy effects for the short run first two years a

do minimum wages affect non wage job attributes evidence on fringe benefits although many studies have tested neoclassical labor market theory s prediction that employers will react to binding minimum wages by reducing employment levels much less empirical research has explored the possibility that employers also respond to minimum wages by adjusting non wage components of the job such as fringe benefits job safety and access to training using current population survey data for 1979 2000 this study investigates the effect of minimum wage legislation on the provision of employer health insurance and employer pension coverage the authors examine effects of state and federal variation in minimum wages on groups likely to be affected by the minimum wage and compare these effects to estimates found for groups unlikely to be affected whether the analysis uses only state level variation or federal and state variation in minimum wages the results indicate no discernible effect of the minimum wage on fringe benefit generosity for low skill workers

a cross national investigation on how ethical consumers build loyalty toward fair trade brands although fair trade has recently experienced rapid growth around the world there is lack of consumer research that investigates what determines consumers loyalty toward fair trade brands in this research we investigate how ethical consumption values ecv and two mediating variables fair trade product beliefs ftpb and fair trade corporate evaluation ftce determine fair trade brand loyalty ftbl on the basis of two empirical studies that use samples from the u s and korea we provide evidence demonstrating that the manner in which ecv influence ftbl differs in the u s and korea in the u s ecv determine ftbl only indirectly via ftpb whereas in korea they determine ftbl directly as well as indirectly via ftce we discuss theoretical and managerial implications of these findings

subsidizing the stork new evidence on tax incentives and fertility this paper exploits the introduction of a pronatalist transfer policy in the canadian province of quebec that paid up to c 8 000 to families having a child i implement a quasi experimental strategy by forming treatment and control groups defined by time jurisdiction and family type the incentive was available broadly rather than to a narrow population as studied in previous work providing an exceptional opportunity to investigate heterogeneous responses i find a strong effect of the policy on fertility and some evidence of a heterogeneous response that may help reconcile these results with previous estimates

children and their parents labor supply evidence from exogenous variation in family size although theoretical models of labor supply and the family are well developed there are few credible estimates of key empirical relationships in the work family nexus this study uses a new instrumental variable the sex composition of the first two births in families with at least two children to estimate the effect of additional children on parents labor supply in the united states instrumental variables estimates using the sex mix are substantial but smaller than the corresponding ordinary least squares ols estimates moreover unlike the ols estimates the female labor supply effects estimated using sex mix instruments appear to be absent among more educated women and women with high wage husbands we also find that married women who have a third child reduce their labor supply by as much as women in the full sample while there is no relationship between wives child bearing and husbands labor supply excerpt

the role of personal values in fair trade consumption research in the u s on fair trade consumption is sparse therefore little is known as to what motivates u s consumers to buy fair trade products this study sought to determine which values are salient to american fair trade consumption the data were gathered via a web based version of the schwartz value survey svs and were gleaned from actual consumers who purchase fair trade products from a range of internet based fair trade retailers this study established that indeed there are significant interactions between personal values and fair trade consumption and that demographics proved to be useless in creating a profile of the american fair trade consumer

fairtrade towns as unconventional networks of ethical activism the growing availability and consumption of fairtrade products is recognised as one of the most widespread ethically inspired market developments and as an example of activist driven change within the wider marketing system the fairtrade towns movement now operating in over 1700 towns and cities globally represents a comparatively recent extension of fairtrade marketing driven by local activists seeking to promote positive change in production and consumption systems this paper briefly explores the conventional framing of the role that ethically related activism plays in the operation of markets and in influencing market participants it then presents key insights gathered from a grounded theory exploration of fairtrade towns as activist driven marketing systems revealing the atypical nature of the activism involved the findings demonstrate how local activists leverage their social networks to exert pressure and generate support to promote ethical consumption the study suggests that fairtrade towns offer a new role for activists as fairtrade itself becomes more mainstream and considers the role they are fulfilling as informal local marketers the marketing dynamics revealed represent a complex and distinctive form of relational activism that seeks to build fairtrade markets and highlight their positive benefits with potential lessons for other local ethical market building efforts in future

paid parental leave laws in the united states does short duration leave affect women s labor force attachment abstract i analyze the effects of short duration paid parental leave on maternal labor supply using monthly longitudinal data from the survey of income and program participation my event study research design estimates impacts of paid leave laws in california and new jersey on women s labor force outcomes around childbirth i find that paid leave laws are associated with a substantial increase in labor force attachment in the months directly around birth while us style short duration leave is unlikely to change prolonged exits from the labor force my findings imply that paid leave laws induce some women stay more attached to jobs particularly low skill women

profiles of fertility labour supply and wages of married women a complete life cycle model of all the major economic and demographic events in the postwar united states period the trends in fertility and female labour supply stand out as among the most dramatic fertility rates after their depression lows rose unexpectedly after world war ii far more than was anticipated as an adjustment to the war and continued to rise until the late 1950 s and early 1960 s when they again took an unexpected turn downward all the way to today s historical lows female labour force participation rates continuing their historical climb grew throughout the postwar period at an increasing pace by 4 percentage points during the 1950 s by 5 percentage points during the 1960 s and by 8 percentage points during the 1970 s these two trends are of course closely related for most married women have traditionally spent at least some minimal time out of the labour force while caring for their own children thus for example the slower growth rate of labour force participation rates in the 1950 s is probably connected with the higher fertility rates in that period in this paper a complete model of female labour supply and fertility choice is constructed and estimated the model is more complete than previous models in several respects first labour supply and fertility decisions are modelled as completely joint in the same sense as the consumption of two goods is joint second both are modelled as life cycle decisions that is as decisions regarding sequences of labour supply and fertility events rather than levels of the same hence the timing of both is important third the life cycle path of wage rates is made endogenous to the model given a wage function showing the effect of work experience on future wages the path of wages is determined automatically by the chosen path of labour supply which in turn is related to fertility decisions that require some period of non work econometrically the three profiles for labour supply fertility and wages are estimated with a full information maximum likelihood technique that solves several econometric problems such as the problem of heterogeneity of tastes the selectivity problem of missing wage rates for non workers and the problem of simultaneous equations bias the value of constructing a complete model is best seen by briefly reviewing past work in this area the modern literature in the area is based upon the work of becker

malthus was right after all poor relief and birth rates in southeastern england the payment of child allowances to laborers with large families was widespread in early nineteenth century england this paper tests thomas malthus s hypothesis that child allowances caused the birth rate to increase a cross sectional regression model is estimated to explain variations in birth rates across parishes in 1826 30 birth rates are found to be related to child allowances income and the availability of housing as malthus contended the paper concludes by examining the role played by the adoption of child allowances after 1795 in the fertility increase of the early nineteenth century

welfare marital prospects and nonmarital childbearing the roles of the entitlements of the afdc program and marital prospects in the fertility and marriage choices of young women are assessed in the context of a model incorporating heritable endowment heterogeneity assortative mating concern for child quality and potential parental and public support alternatives estimates based on data describing the fertility and marital experience up to age 23 of the eight birth cohorts of women in the nlsy provide evidence that higher afdc benefit levels and lower marital prospects induce young women to choose to have a child outside of marriage

the development benefits of maternity leave summary within developing countries studies addressing the effects of maternity benefits on fertility infant child health and women s labor force participation are limited and provide contradictory findings yet knowledge regarding the implementation of maternity provisions is essential as such policies could significantly improve women and children s well being we add to this literature using fixed effects panel regression from 1999 to 2012 across 121 developing countries to explore whether different types of maternity leave policies affect infant child mortality rates fertility and women s labor force participation and whether those effects are shaped by disparities in gdp per capita and secondary school enrollment our findings demonstrate 1 both infant and child mortality rates are expected to decline in countries that institute any leave policy policies that last 12 weeks or longer and policies that increase in duration and payment as a percentage of total annual salary 2 fertility is expected to decline in countries that have higher weekly paid compensation 3 maternity leave provisions decrease fertility and infant child mortality rates most in countries with lower gdp per capita and countries with middle range secondary enrollment rates and 4 labor force participation does not increase our results suggest that policy makers must consider the duration compensation and goals addressing fertility versus mortality rates of a policy alongside a country s economic development and secondary school enrollment when determining which maternity leave provisions to apply within developing country contexts