can education subsidy reverse falling fertility the case of taiwan abstract the education subsidy in taiwan is available for government employees only in 1996 the government ceased to index the education subsidy for inflation which created a natural experiment ideal for studying the effect of the education subsidy on fertility using the difference in differences approach we find that the reform reduced the fertility probability for public sector households by 17 per cent and this negative response appears to be permanent the estimated probability elasticity of fertility is 0 05 which is smaller than that of personal tax exemption 0 8 the results also suggest that the education subsidy has a heterogeneous effect on fertility across income groups

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

buy lie or die an investigation of chinese st firms voluntary interim audit motive and auditor independence in the chinese stock market special treatment st firms are the firms listed as facing imminent danger of delisting unless they return to profitability after reporting two consecutive annual losses some st firms voluntarily pay substantial fees to their external auditors to conduct interim audits which are not required by regulations in this study we investigate and find that st firms that pay for voluntary interim audits report greater discretionary accrued earnings higher non operating earnings and higher returns on assets in ensuing annual reports as a result these firms are more likely to return to profitability and reduce their delisting risk our results which contribute to the current debate on auditor independence appear to be consistent with the possibility that st firms buy external auditors cooperation to manipulate earnings when faced with the threat of delisting

revisiting the bright and dark sides of capital flows in business groups prior studies report that the business group structure and the associated intra group capital flows are prone to conflicts of interest between controlling shareholders and minority investors yet business group is a prevalent and stable structure around the globe particularly where capital markets are underdeveloped using data from china this paper empirically studies the trade off between the negative and positive roles played by intra group capital flows and tests the efficiency implications of such trade off we find that from the perspective of the whole group intra group capital flows are most efficient when the groups are least subject to conflicts of interest between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders and when they face strong external financing constraints

tax incentives and fertility in canada quantum vs tempo effects using inter jurisdictional differences in the implementation of the family allowance program in canada in the mid 1970s this paper first shows that quebec families with two or more children prior to being exposed to the program responded quite strongly to the added incentives in the short run relative to women in other canadian provinces tracking down the cohorts across censuses we find that the same group of quebec families subsequently showed a decrease in fertility relative to the rest of canada leaving ultimate family size unaffected these results are consistent with the program having generated only a timing effect utilisant les differences entre juridictions dans la mise en uvre du programme d allocations familiales au canada au milieu des annees 70 ce memoire montre d abord que les familles quebecoises qui avaient deux enfants ou plus avant d etre exposees au programme ont repondu tres fortement aux incitations additionnelles a court terme en comparaison avec ce qui s est passe dans les autres provinces canadiennes en suivant les cohortes a travers les recensements on montre que ce meme groupe de familles du quebec a par la suite subi un declin de fecondite par rapport au reste du canada ce qui a eu pour effet de laisser la taille de la famille ultimement non affectee d une maniere relative ces resultats sont coherents avec la conclusion que le programme a seulement eu un effet sur le profil temporel de la fecondite

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

from theory to practice canadian economists contributions to public finance we survey canadian economists contributions to the field of public finance from the mid 1980s to 2016 we highlight the development and extension of the models and tools of public economics and the empirical studies that have deepened our understanding of the efficiency and distributional issues over a wide range of public finance issues we also highlight contributions to the development of policies through commissioned reports and the important role that canadian institutions the canadian tax foundation the think tanks and the federal and provincial departments of finance have played in shaping tax and fiscal policies de la theorie a la pratique contributions des economistes canadiens a la finance publique on examine les contributions des economistes canadiens au domaine de la finance publique du milieu des annees 1980 a 2016 on souligne le developpement et l extension des modeles et des outils d economie publique et les etudes empiriques qui ont aide a approfondir notre comprehension des enjeux d efficacite et de distribution dans un vaste eventail de questions de finance publique on souligne aussi les contributions des rapports commandites au developpement de politiques publiques ainsi que le role important d institutions canadiennes l association canadienne d etudes fiscales les groupes d experts ainsi que les ministeres des finances du gouvernement federal et des gouvernements provinciaux dans le design des politiques fiscales

culture marketization and owner manager agency costs a case of merchant guild culture in china this study explores cultural influence on corporate behavior employing the case of merchant guild culture in china and further the moderating role of marketization using hand collected data on merchant guild culture we find that merchant guild culture is significantly negatively associated with owner manager agency costs suggesting that merchant guild culture in ancient china still has its continuous and remarkable effects on managerial behavior in contemporary corporations this finding also implies that merchant guild culture motivates managers to upgrade the efficiency of controlling operating costs reduces agency conflicts between management and shareholders and eventually mitigates owner manager agency costs moreover provincial marketization level attenuates the negative association between merchant guild culture and owner manager agency costs above results are robust to a variety of alternative measures of merchant guild culture and owner manager agency costs furthermore our findings are still valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity between merchant guild culture and owner manager agency costs

does religion shape corporate cost behavior using u s listed firms during the period from 1971 to 2010 this paper investigates the effect of religion on corporate cost behavior we find that religion mitigates cost stickiness induced by agency or behavioral biases of managers this result holds for several robustness tests that address endogeneity concerns the mitigating effect of religion on cost stickiness is through the channel of reducing top managers overconfidence and optimistic bias regarding future demand change risk aversion mechanism and promoting managers adherence to fiduciary responsibilities and consideration of shareholder benefits ethic mechanism further evidence shows that the reduction in cost stickiness caused by religion increases firm value overall our findings suggest that religion reduces the wedge between a firm s actual and optimal resource commitments which helps to improve firm value and resource allocation efficiency

house prices and birth rates the impact of the real estate market on the decision to have a baby abstract this project investigates how changes in metropolitan statistical area msa level house prices affect household fertility decisions recognizing that housing is a major cost associated with child rearing and assuming that children are normal goods we hypothesize that an increase in house prices will have a negative price effect on current period fertility this applies to both potential first time homeowners and current homeowners who might upgrade to a bigger house with the addition of a child on the other hand for current homeowners an increase in msa level house prices will increase home equity leading to a positive effect on birth rates our results suggest that indeed short term increases in house prices lead to a decline in births among non owners and a net increase among owners the estimates imply that a 10 000 increase leads to a 5 increase in fertility rates among owners and a 2 4 decrease among non owners at the mean u s home ownership rate these estimates imply that the net effect of a 10 000 increase in house prices is a 0 8 increase in current period fertility rates given underlying differences in home ownership rates the predicted net effect of house price changes varies across demographic groups in addition we find that changes in house prices exert a larger effect on current period birth rates than do changes in unemployment rates

the career costs of children this paper analyzes the life cycle career costs associated with child rearing and decomposes their eects into unearned wages as women drop out of the labor market loss of human capital and selection into more child friendly occupations we estimate a dynamic life cycle model of fertility occupational choice and labor supply using detailed survey and administrative data for germany for numerous birth cohorts across dierent regions we use this model to analyze both the male female wage gap as it evolves from labor market entry onward and the eect of pro fertility policies we show that a substantial portion of the gender wage gap is explainable by realized and expected fertility and that the long run eect of policies encouraging fertility are considerably lower than the short run eects typically estimated in the literature

private incentives and social interactions fertility puzzles in israel this paper explores how private and social incentives for fertility may have combined to produce the complex fertility pattern observed in israel in the past half century fertility has declined within some ethnic religious groups moderately increased in others and parts of the ultra orthodox jewish population have experienced a reverse fertility transition in which childbearing has increased rapidly and substantially we present a theoretical analysis of the social dynamics of fertility that shows how private preferences preferences for conformity to social norms in childbearing and piecewise linear child allowances could have combined to yield such a complex fertility pattern we then explain the identification problem that makes it so difficult to infer the actual israeli fertility process from data on completed fertility jel jel jel jel jel jel

markets and institutions in financial intermediation national characteristics as determinants abstract given the importance of financial intermediation and the rise of globalization there is little prior research on how national preferences for financial intermediation markets versus institutions are determined by cultural legal and other national characteristics using panel analysis for data on a recent 8 year period for 30 countries this paper documents that national preferences for market financing increase with political stability societal openness economic inequality and equity market concentration and decreases with regulatory quality and ambiguity aversion we confirm with robustness tests that our result for regulatory quality is independent of differences in national wealth and that our result for political stability is independent of both wealth and political legitimacy these results should be of much interest to managers scholars regulators and policy makers

does confucianism reduce minority shareholder expropriation evidence from china using a sample of 12 061 firm year observations from the chinese stock market for the period of 2001 2011 and geographic proximity based confucianism variables this study provides strong evidence that confucianism is significantly negatively associated with minority shareholder expropriation implying that confucianism does mitigate agency conflicts between the controlling shareholder and minority shareholders this finding suggests that confucianism has important influence on business ethics and thus can serve as an important ethical philosophy or social norm to mitigate the controlling shareholder s unethical expropriation behavior moreover my findings reveal that the nature of the ultimate owner attenuates the negative association between confucianism and minority shareholder expropriation suggesting that confucianism s negative impact on minority shareholder expropriation is less pronounced for state owned enterprises than for non state owned enterprises the above results are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests and my findings are valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity between confucianism and minority shareholder expropriation

the effect of job displacement on couples fertility decisions this paper analyzes the effects of job displacement on fertility using finnish longitudinal register data we focus on couples where one spouse has lost a job due to a plant closure and follow them for several years before and following the job loss the results show that female job loss decreases fertility for every 100 displaced females there are three fewer children born male job loss has no impact on fertility despite resulting in a stronger decrease in family income than female job loss this indicates that the income effect is not the mechanism through which job displacement influences fertility

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

does confucianism reduce board gender diversity firm level evidence from china this study extends previous literature on the association between confucianism and corporate decisions by examining confucianism s influence on board gender diversity using a sample of chinese listed firms during the period of 2001 2011 and geographic proximity based confucianism variables i provide strong and consistent evidence to show that confucianism is significantly negatively associated with board gender diversity suggesting that the proportion of women directors in the boardroom is significantly lower for firms surrounded by strong confucianism atmosphere than for firms located in regions with weak confucianism atmosphere this finding also implies that confucian philosophical system has important impacts on business ethics and women s status in corporate governance moreover gdp per capita the proxy for economic development level in a province in which a firm is located attenuates the negative association between confucianism and board gender diversity above results are robust to different measures of confucianism and board gender diversity and are still valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity between confucianism and board gender diversity

changing the cost of children and fertility evidence from the israeli kibbutz prior to 1996 israelis in collective communities kibbutzim shared the costs of raising children equally this paper examines the impact of privatizing costs of children on the behavior of young couples using universal microdata on kibbutz members exploiting variation in the increase in cost sharing across kibbutzim we estimate that lifetime fertility declined by 0 65 children in the cohorts of affected parents we also examine the exit decisions of members and find that couples were most likely to leave the kibbutz if they were either higher income or lower fertility this pattern is also observed among israeli emigrants in which higher educated and lower fertility couples are more likely to leave israel

will the stork return to europe and japan understanding fertility within developed nations we seek to explain the differences in fertility rates across high income countries by focusing on the interaction between the increasing status of women in the workforce and their status in the household particularly with regards to child care and home production we observe three distinct phases in women s status generated by the gradual increase in women s workforce opportunities in the earliest phase characteristic of the 1950s and 1960s in the united states women earn low wages relative to men and are expected to shoulder all of the child care at home as a result most women specialize in home production and raising children in an intermediate stage women have improved but not equal labor market opportunities but their household status lags women in this stage are still expected to do the majority of child care and household production increasing access to market work increases the opportunity cost of having children and fertility falls female labor force participation increases working women in this phase of development have the strongest disincentives to having additional children since the entire burden of child care falls on them in the final phase of development women s labor market opportunities begin to equal those of men in addition the increased household bargaining power that comes from more equal wages results in much higher if not gender equal male participation in household production female labor force participation is higher than in the intermediate phase the increased participation of men in the household also reduces the disincentives for women to have additional children and fertility rates rise compared to the intermediate phase the intermediate low fertility phase might describe japan italy and spain in the present day while the scandinavian countries the netherlands and the modern day united states may be entering the final phase after presenting the empirical evidence we predict that high income countries with the lowest fertility rates are likely to see an increase in fertility in the coming decades

parental responses to child support obligations evidence from administrative data abstract we study parental responses to child support obligations using rich administrative data from denmark and variation in the child support formula we estimate that a 1000 dkk 160 increase in a father s obligation is associated with a 273 dkk 45 increase in his payment a higher obligation reduces father child co residence pointing to substitution between financial and non pecuniary investments further obligations increase post separation fertility among remarried fathers but have no impacts on maternal fertility or either parent s labor supply our findings suggest that government efforts to increase child investments through mandates on parents can be complicated by their behavioral responses to them

religion and the method of earnings management evidence from china previous studies argue that religious firms are more ethical and thus engage less in accrual earnings management at odds with the ethical view we use a sample of chinese listed firms and show that firms in religious regions use more real earnings management we postulate that besides ethics religion also proxies for risk aversion which motivates firms to substitute accrual earnings management with real earnings management consistent with this view we show that the positive negative association between religiosity and real accrual earnings management is more pronounced for firms with lower litigation risk and for firms with less reputable auditors in addition we use a mediation model introduced by baron and kenny j pers soc psychol 51 6 1173 1182 1986 to show that religiosity affects earnings management through the channel of risk aversion we conclude that firms choose real earnings management over accrual based earnings management because of risk aversion rather than ethical reasons

the effect of tax transfer policies on fertility in canada 1921 88 this paper estimates the effect on fertility of the personal tax exemption for children child tax credit family allowances and maternity leave benefits in canada using time series data from 1921 to 1988 it is found that the exemption child tax credit and family allowances all have significant and positive effects on fertility the results are robust to a variety of specifications including first differencing while the three tax transfer programs seem to be very distinct the null hypothesis that they have no differential effects on fertility can hardly be rejected all the results also hold for the cumulative effect of the three tax transfer programs the estimates predict that a large increase in the value of the tax transfer programs would be needed to increase fertility to the replacement level

do family wealth shocks affect fertility choices evidence from the housing market abstract this paper uses wealth changes driven by housing market variation to estimate the effect of family resources on fertility decisions using data from the panel study of income dynamics we show that a 100 000 increase in housing wealth among home owners causes a 16 to 18 increase in the probability of having a child there is no evidence of an effect of msa level housing price growth on the fertility of renters however we also present evidence that housing wealth growth increases total fertility and that the responsiveness of fertility to housing wealth has increased over time commensurate with the recent housing boom

does religion mitigate earnings management evidence from china using a sample of 11 357 firm year observations from the chinese stock market for the period of 2001 2011 we investigate whether and how religion can mitigate earnings management specifically based on geographic proximity based religion variables we provide strong and robust evidence to show that religion is significantly negatively associated with the extent of earnings management suggesting that religion can serve as a set of social norms to mitigate corporate unethical behavior such as earnings management our findings also reveal that the negative association between religion and earnings management is less pronounced for firms with closer distance to the regulatory centers than for their counterparts implying the substitutive effects between religion and the distance to regulators the proxy for regulatory intensity on mitigating earnings management the above results are robust to different measures of earnings management various religion variables and a variety of sensitivity tests

suffer the little children measuring the effects of parenthood on well being worldwide abstract this paper investigates the relationship between parenthood and well being in a large sample of individuals from 94 countries worldwide we find that having children is negatively related to well being conditioning on economic and socio demographic characteristics can only partially help to explain this finding we show that the negative effect of parenthood on well being is explained by a large adverse impact on financial satisfaction that dominates the positive impact on non financial satisfaction the results are robust to the use of alternative empirical specifications and to the inclusion of the reported ideal number of children as a proxy variable to account for the endogeneity of parenthood decisions

financial incentives and fertility using panel data on over 300 000 israeli women from 1999 to 2005 we exploit variation in israel s child subsidy to identify the impact of changes in the price of a marginal child on fertility we find a positive statistically significant and economically meaningful price effect on overall fertility and consistent with becker 1960 and becker and tomes 1976 a small effect of income on fertility which is negative at low and positive at high income levels we also find a price effect on fertility among older women suggesting that part of the overall effect is due to a reduction in total fertility

corporate environmental responsibility in polluting industries does religion matter using a sample of chinese listed firms in polluting industries for the period of 2008 2010 we empirically investigate whether and how buddhism china s most influential religion affects corporate environmental responsibility cer in this study we measure buddhist variables as the number of buddhist monasteries within a certain radius around chinese listed firms registered addresses in addition we hand collect corporate environmental disclosure scores based on the global reporting initiative gri sustainability reporting guidelines using hand collected buddhism data and corporate environmental disclosure scores we provide strong and robust evidence that buddhism is significantly positively associated with cer this finding is consistent with the following view buddhism can serve as social norms to evoke the consciousness of social responsibility and thereof strengthen cer our findings also reveal that the positive association between buddhism and cer is attenuated for firms with higher law enforcement index the results are robust to various measures of buddhism and a variety of sensitivity tests

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

can financial incentives reduce the baby gap evidence from a reform in maternity leave benefits abstract in this paper i assess whether earnings dependent maternity leave positively impacts fertility and narrows the baby gap between highly educated high earning and less educated low earning women i exploit a major maternity leave benefit reform in germany that considerably increased the financial incentives by up to 21 000 eur for highly educated and higher earning women using the large differential changes in maternity leave benefits across education and income groups in a differences in differences design i estimate the causal impact of the reform on fertility for up to 5 years in addition to demonstrating an up to 23 increase in the fertility of tertiary educated women i find a positive statistically significant effect of increased benefits on fertility driven mainly by women at the middle and upper end of the earnings distribution overall the results suggest that earnings dependent maternity leave benefits which compensate women according to their opportunity cost of childbearing could successfully reduce the fertility rate disparity related to mothers education and earnings

does religion mitigate tunneling evidence from chinese buddhism in the chinese stock market controlling shareholders often use inter corporate loans to expropriate a great amount of cash from listed firms through a process called tunneling using a sample of 10 170 firm year observations from the chinese stock market for the period of 2001 2010 i examine whether and how buddhism china s most influential religion can mitigate tunneling in particular using firm level buddhism data measured as the number of buddhist monasteries within a certain radius around chinese listed firms registered addresses this study provides strong evidence that buddhism intensity is significantly negatively associated with tunneling this finding is consistent with the view that buddhism has important influence on corporate behavior and can serve as a set of social norms and or an alternative mechanism to mitigate controlling shareholders unethical tunneling behavior in addition my findings also reveal that the negative association between buddhism intensity and tunneling is attenuated for firms that have high analyst coverage the results are robust to various measures of buddhism intensity and a variety of sensitivity tests

does religion matter to owner manager agency costs evidence from china in china buddhism and taoism are two major religions using a sample of 10 363 firm year observations from the chinese stock market for the period of 2001 2010 i provide strong and robust evidence that religion i e buddhism and taoism on the whole is significantly negatively associated with owner manager agency costs in particular using firm level religion data measured by the number of religious sites within a radius of certain distance around a listed firm s registered address i find that religion is significantly negatively positively associated with expense ratio asset utilization ratio the positive reverse proxy for owner manager agency costs this finding is consistent with the following view religiosity has remarkable effects on the way how an individual thinks and behaves and thereof can curb managers from unethical business practices moreover my findings suggest that the negative association between religion and owner manager agency costs is attenuated for firms with strong external monitoring mechanisms such as higher marketization and high quality auditors furthermore after separating buddhism from taoism my finding indicates that above conclusions are only available for buddhism suggesting that different religions may have asymmetric influence on owner manager agency costs above results are robust to various measures of religiosity and a variety of robustness checks

does religion matter to informal finance evidence from trade credit in china informal finance plays an important role in transitional economies with weak legal institutions such as china as a major informal finance instrument trade credit relies on informal institutions

fertility and the personal exemption comment one of the most commonly cited studies on the effect of child subsidies on fertility whittington alm and peters 1990 claimed a large positive effect of child tax benefits on fertility using time series methods we revisit this question in light of recent increases in child tax benefits by replicating this earlier study and extending the analysis we do not find strong evidence to justify the model specification from the original paper moreover even if the original specification is appropriate we show that the results are not robust to more general measures of child tax benefits jel h24 j13

children of a policy revolution the introduction of universal child care and its effect on fertility what role does affordable and widely available public child care play for fertility we exploit a major german reform generating large temporal and spatial variation in child care coverage for children under the age of three our precise and robust estimates on birth register data reveal that increases in public child care have significant positive effects on fertility the fertility effects are more pronounced at the intensive than at the extensive margin and are not driven by changes in the timing of births or selective migration our findings inform policy makers concerned about low fertility by suggesting that universal early child care holds the promise of being an effective means of increasing birth rates

tariff retaliation from a strategic viewpoint one of the most perplexing questions in international trade concerns the rationale for the existence of widespread barriers to trade in the current world economy 1 the numerous explanations that have been offered for the existence of tariffs are generally based on one of the following four arguments a the existence of market imperfections monopolies externalities etc invalidates the free trade theorem and thus free trade is not desirable or perhaps not obtainable b sluggish adjustment of the world economy to free trade implies that the existing tariffs are a temporary phase c non economic phenomena such as nationalism induce political or institutional tariff arrangements or d protectionist motives to improve the welfare of a country or a group of individuals in that country induce all countries to simultaneously impose tariffs while all of these factors can be important in the explanation of the existence of tariffs the purpose of this paper is to develop an extended analysis of the protectionist view the protectionist view is based on the optimal tariff theorem which states under very restrictive assumptions that a country can improve its welfare by imposing a tariff 5 12 a serious difficulty with this explanation is that the optimal tariff theorem assumes that no retaliation occurs as scitovsky 12 points out a country that could benefit from charging a tariff has monopoly power in trade surely a country sophisticated enough to exercise monopoly power in trade would expect its rivals to respond when tariffs are erected hence scitovsky argues that if protection is the monopolistic behavior of a collectivity two countries raising tariffs against each other are bilateral monopolists and we know that bilateral monopoly results in the two parties coming to some working agreement whose terms depend on their bargaining skill and are analytically indeterminate scitovsky concluded that a tariff war would result in an indeterminate solution with both countries worse off johnson 6 formalized scitovsky s agrument by allowing each country to adopt a cournot type assumption regarding its rival s reaction to a change in its own tariff thus

religion and economy religion has a two way interaction with political economy with religion viewed as a dependent variable a central question is how economic development and political institutions affect religious participation and beliefs with religion viewed as an independent variable a key issue is how religiosity affects individual characteristics such as work ethic honesty and thrift and thereby influences economic performance in this paper we sketch previous studies of this two way interaction but focus on our ongoing quantitative research with international data

the impact of welfare on young mothers subsequent childbearing decisions the impact of welfare on fertility in the united states is explored focusing on the theory that some women have many children to increase their incomes and to prolong their stay on welfare rolls the author examines the relationship between welfare and births to women who already have a child using data on young mothers from the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy i find that variations in welfare benefit levels and the incremental benefit have no statistically significant impacts on the subsequent childbearing decisions of young mothers in general nor on the subsequent childbearing decisions of women who received welfare in particular furthermore mothers who received welfare to support their first children are no more likely to have additional children in any given year through the age of 23 excerpt

disability policy and the labor market evidence from a natural experiment in canada 1998 2006 abstract this paper examines the effect of changes in two key parameters in disability policy a the earnings that disability insurance beneficiaries are allowed to earn without losing their disability benefits and b automatic reinstatement where beneficiaries can have benefits reinstated without re application and re testing for disability determination we examine the effects of these policy changes on the probability of employment for disability beneficiaries as well as the flows onto and off the disability rolls we obtain our estimates using a difference in difference strategy that exploits the unique structure of disability insurance arrangements in canada namely that there are two programs one that covers individuals in the province of quebec and one in the rest of canada our preferred estimates indicate that the introduction of the allowable earnings change increased the propensity of disability beneficiaries to work but we do not find that the earnings exemption had an effect on the flows on to or off the disability rolls in contrast we find that the introduction of the automatic reinstatement policy did not have an effect on any of the outcomes we examine

dynamic tariffs with asymmetric information recent developments in dynamic game theory are applied to determine when two countries can sustain freer trade given that they determine trade policies non cooperatively countries know their own level of protection but not the other country s level of protection using import trigger strategies cooperation in the form of low tariffs can be supported although there are periodic reversionary high tariff episodes however if terms of trade trigger strategies are used cooperation does not occur

does religion matter in corporate decision making in america abstract we examine how corporate culture influences firm behavior prior research suggests a link between individual religiosity and risk aversion we find that this relationship also influences organizational behavior firms located in counties with higher levels of religiosity display lower degrees of risk exposure as measured by variances in equity returns or returns on assets they exhibit a lower investment rate and less growth but generate a more positive market reaction when they announce new investments finally chief executive officers are more likely to join a firm with a similar religious environment as in their previous firm when they switch employers

child cash benefits and family expenditures evidence from the national child benefit income may improve child outcomes through two mechanisms as a direct input into health and education or indirectly by reducing household financial stress we exploit policy induced changes in refundable tax benefit income in canada to study these two potential mechanisms our findings suggest that additional income may improve outcomes through both mechanisms some benefit income is spent on direct education inputs while some is spent on everyday items likely to improve the general conditions children face additionally some families reduce spending on risky behaviour items spending responses to benefit generosity appear to vary by income and by child age prestations pour enfants en especes et depenses des familles ce que revele la prestation nationale pour enfants le revenu permet d ameliorer le developpement d un enfant gr ce a deux mecanismes en contribuant directement a l education et a la sante et en reduisant indirectement les difficultes financieres au sein du foyer afin d etudier ces deux mecanismes nous nous appuyons sur les modifications politiques apportees au credit d impot remboursable de type prestation fiscale pour revenu de travail au canada nos resultats suggerent que par l entremise de ces deux mecanismes la situation peut s ameliorer gr ce a un revenu additionnel une partie de ces prestations est depensee directement pour l education tandis qu une autre est utilisee pour les biens quotidiens susceptibles d ameliorer les conditions de vie generales de l enfant de plus certaines familles reduisent les depenses d articles pouvant induire des comportements a risque les types de depenses lies aux prestations sociales semblent varier en fonction des revenus et de l ge des enfants

are children really inferior goods evidence from displacement driven income shocks abstract this paper explores the causal link between income and fertility by analyzing women s fertility response to the large and permanent income shock generated by a husband s job displacement i find that the shock reduces total fertility suggesting that the causal effect of income on fertility is positive a model that incorporates the time cost of children and assortative matching of spouses can simultaneously explain this result and the negative cross sectional relationship i also find that a husband s displacement accelerates childbearing which is consistent with lifecycle models of fertility in which the incentive to delay is driven by expected earnings growth

redistribution fertility and growth the effect of the opportunities abroad abstract this article analyzes the effect of the opportunities abroad on the growth path that a small open economy in which redistribution policy in favor of less prosperous segments takes place is expected to follow the model shows that redistribution policy raises fertility among the unskilled recipients lowers fertility among the contributing skilled slows human capital accumulation and reduces per capita output growth the paper demonstrates that the opportunities abroad determine the share of income redistributed and ultimately induce the offspring of the unskilled to invest in human capital and decrease their family size

introduction to the economics of religion after a very long hiatus economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion this article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity the characteristics of religious groups and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets

canadian contributions to family economics canadian scholars have made substantial contributions to the relatively new field of family economics these include new models of how men and women match in marriage markets and of how decisions are made in multi person households several were early contributors to the literature on married women s labour supply and labour supply in a family context and helped to develop empirical methods in this area a particular focus has been on the impacts of policy relevant parameters such childcare costs on family labour supply and child well being new work on child development the impact of early life conditions and the processes of intergenerational transmission also highlight the importance of family context in determining economic well being

the integration of child tax credits and welfare evidence from the national child benefit program abstract in 1998 the canadian government introduced a new child tax credit the innovation in the program was its integration with social assistance welfare some provinces agreed to subtract the new federally paid benefits from provincially paid social assistance partially lowering the welfare wall other provinces did not integrate benefits providing a quasi experimental framework for estimation we find large changes in social assistance take up and employment in provinces that provided the labour market incentives to do so in our sample the integration of benefits can account for between 19 and 27 of the decline in social assistance receipt between 1997 and 2000

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

born on the first of july an un natural experiment in birth timing abstract it is well understood that government policies can distort behavior but what is less often recognized is that the anticipated introduction of a policy can introduce its own distortions we study one such introduction effect using evidence from a unique policy change in australia in 2004 the australian government announced that children born on or after july 1 2004 would receive a 3000 baby bonus although the policy was only announced seven weeks before its introduction parents appear to have behaved strategically in order to receive the benefit with the number of births dipping sharply before the policy commenced on july 1 2004 more australian children were born than on any other single date in the past thirty years we estimate that over 1000 births were moved so as to ensure that their parents were eligible for the baby bonus with about one quarter being moved by more than one week most of the effect was due to changes in the timing of induction and cesarean section procedures we find evidence to suggest that babies who were shifted into the eligibility period were more likely to be of high birth weight two years later on july 1 2006 the baby bonus was increased and we find that this again caused births to be moved from june to july these birth timing events represent an opportunity for health researchers to study the impact of planned birthdays and hospital management issues

federalism fertility and growth this paper analyses the effect of federalism on fertility and growth in a model with human capital accumulation and endogenous fertility two regimes of education finance are compared central and local i find that local education finance yields higher growth at the price of increased inequality the effect of federalism on total and differential fertility rates depends on the elasticity of substitution between children and consumption the paper also empirically examines the relationship between fertility rates and fiscal decentralisation on a panel of oecd countries and finds a weak negative effect of decentralisation on total and differential poor minus rich fertility

what is the income cost of a child exact equivalence scales for canadian two parent families this note asks how much income does it take to preserve the prechild standard of living for all members of the postchild household equivalence scales for canadian two parent families are estimated using a complete demand system approach and imposing the condition of equiva lence scale exactness independent of a base blackorby and donaldson 1993 lewbel 1989 this approach has several advantages 1 it is formally grounded in economic theory 2 the income required for children can be estimated without ignoring the well being of the children themselves 3 the estimates obtained appear reasonable relative to others currently available in the literature

paternity deferments and the timing of births u s natality during the vietnam war i background during the conflict in vietnam men between 18 5 and 25 yr of age were subject to the draft several exemptions to this rule existed for example students were exempt importantly for the purposes of this study married men with dependents could also obtain a deferment from the draft and the particulars of this policy underwent substantial changes in the 1960s in august 1965 president johnson issued executive order 11241 which formally eliminated deferments for childless men who got married after august 26 1965 and in october 1965 the selective service declared that childless married men irrespective of the date of marriage were to be called up both announcements came as a surprise new york times 1965a since married men with children remained exempt the declarations provided a strong incentive for young couples to conceive a first born child before august 1965 marriage had been a sufficient condition for a deferment even just a few hours before the august 26 midnight deadline desperate couples tried to make use of this provision by quickly scheduling their wedding between august and october couples who had missed the deadline had to satisfy an additional condition conceiving a child childless men who got married in this period were still subject to the draft and so had an incentive to conceive a child in october 1965 the risk of induction was further extended to all couples who had remained childless finally in april 1970 the family deferments were entirely eliminated by executive order 11527 the selective service system office of public and intergovernmental affairs 2004 past research has demonstrated that taxes and expenditure programs can affect fertility e g whittington alm and peters 1990 see also milligan 2005 for an excellent review as well as the timing of delivery dickert conlin and chandra 1999 the goal of this article was to provide additional evidence on the responsiveness of childbearing to incentives embedded in public policy by studying a dramatic yet unexamined government intervention the effects of the vietnam war paternity deferments on the decision to conceive a first born child as discussed in the popular press vice president dick cheney s first daughter elizabeth was born 9 mo 2 d after the selective service system announced that childless married men were to be drafted boston globe 2000 slate chatterbox 2004 did draft eligible men strategically react to the announcement and if so how widespread and fast was the response to my knowledge no one has investigated the impacts of the vietnam draft on natality using the vietnam draft rules to identify a causal effect however i build on several prior studies angrist for example uses the exogeneity of the vietnam draft rules to identify the effects of military service on lifetime earnings angrist 1990 angrist and chen 2007 and to measure the racial differences in the value of military service angrist 1991 gullason 1989 and card and lemieux 2001 2002 estimate the effects of the vietnam draft on schooling explicitly recognizing that college attendance often served as a vehicle to avoid the draft both studies find a significant effect of the probability of being drafted on school enrollment the fact that the changes in the selective service rules were both unexpected and widely publicized makes this an ideal example to study the effects of policy on fertility decisions milligan 2005 argues that the assumptions made about the timing of the response to policy are arbitrary since a reaction will be delayed not only by a 9 mo gestational lag but also by the time necessary for the diffusion of information about the change in policy in the case examined here however the criticism seems less relevant newspaper clippings from august 27 1965 suggest that the issuance of the executive order 11241 did receive broad attention for example the story was listed on the front pages of new york times 1965c and washington post 1965b

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 effect of universal child benefits on labour supply using a difference in differences estimator i find the canadian universal child care benefit has significant negative income effects on the labour supply of married individuals the likelihood of lower educated mothers to participate in the labour force is reduced 3 2 percentage points when receiving the benefit median hours worked per week among lower educated mothers is reduced by 1 9 hours the effects on higher educated mothers are substantial with median hours worked among higher educated mothers reduced by nearly one hour per week for men the evidence suggests small but significant income effects on labour supply consistent with the literature on labour supply elasticities