Female Labor Supply: Why Is the United States Falling Behind?

By Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn

American Economic Review, May 2013

In 1990, the US had the sixth highest female labor participation rate among 22 OECD countries. By 2010 its rank had fallen to seventeenth. We find that the expansion of "family-friendly" policies, including parental leave and part-time work entitlements i...

Shocking Labor Supply: A Reassessment of the Role of World War II on Women's Labor Supply

By Claudia Goldin and Claudia Olivetti

American Economic Review, May 2013

The most prominent feature of the female labor force across the past hundred years is its enormous growth. But many believe that the increase was discontinuous. Our purpose is to identify the short- and long-run impacts of WWII on the labor supply of wome...

Is Ignorance Bliss? The Effect of Asymmetric Information between Spouses on Intra-household Allocations

By Carolina Castilla and Thomas Walker

American Economic Review, May 2013

We conducted a field experiment in Southern Ghana to test the effect of asymmetric information on intrahousehold allocation. A lottery was conducted, where prizes were distributed in public and in private. The results indicate that asymmetric information ...

Trade Liberalization and Gender Inequality

By Chinhui Juhn, Gergely Ujhelyi, and Carolina Villegas-Sanchez

American Economic Review, May 2013

We consider a model where firms differ in their productivity and workers are differentiated by skill and gender. A reduction in tariffs induces more productive firms to modernize their technology and enter the export market. New technologies involve compu...

Sexual Violence against Women and Labor Market Outcomes

By Joseph J. Sabia, Angela K. Dills, and Jeffrey DeSimone

American Economic Review, May 2013

This study is the first in the economics literature to explore the labor market consequences of sexual violence toward women. Using data from the Add Health, we find that sexual violence against women is associated with a 6.6 percent lower probability of ...

The Effects of School Calendar Type on Maternal Employment across Racial Groups: A Story of Child Care Availability

By Jennifer Graves

American Economic Review, May 2013

This paper presents evidence that school districts' use of an alternative academic calendar, the year-round school calendar, results in a reduction in maternal employment for women with school-aged children that varies in magnitude across racial groups. N...

The Impact of Crime and Insecurity on Trust in Democracy and Institutions

By Luisa Blanco and Isabel Ruiz

American Economic Review, May 2013

This paper examines the impact of crime and insecurity on support for and satisfaction with democracy and trust in institutions. We use survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) for Colombia during the 2004-2010 period. We find th...

Earnings Inequality and the Intersectionality of Gender and Ethnicity in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Tanzanian Manufacturing

By Juliet U. Elu and Linda Loubert

American Economic Review, May 2013

This paper estimates quantile earnings functions with data from the 2004 Tanzanian Household Worker Survey to determine if ethnicity and gender--being female--matters per se and across the distribution of earnings. We find that in the Tanzanian manufactur...

Access to Credit by Firms in Sub-Saharan Africa: How Relevant Is Gender?

By Elizabeth Asiedu, Isaac Kalonda-Kanyama, Leonce Ndikumana, and Akwasi Nti-Addae

American Economic Review, May 2013

The literature on the determinants of firms' financing constraints has paid little attention to gender as a determinant of access to finance. Using data for 34,342 firms from 90 developing countries, the paper analyzes the determinants of firms' financing...

Fidelity Networks and Long-Run Trends in HIV/AIDS Gender Gaps

By Roland Pongou and Roberto Serrano

American Economic Review, May 2013

More than half of the HIV/AIDS-infected population today are women. We study a dynamic model of (in)fidelity, which explains the HIV/AIDS gender gap by the configuration of sexual networks. Each individual desires sexual relationships with opposite sex in...

The Informational Role of Voluntary Certification: Evidence from the Mexican Clean Industry Program

By Andrew D. Foster and Emilio Gutierrez

American Economic Review, May 2013

In the presence of imperfect information, voluntary certification can provide an important complement to mandatory inspections as a basis for environmental regulation in low income countries. Using data from Mexico's Clean Industry Program, we show that p...

Liquidity Constraints and Deforestation: The Limitations of Payments for Ecosystem Services

By Seema Jayachandran

American Economic Review, May 2013

A popular environmental policy is to pay forest owners for avoiding deforestation on their land. This is an example of "payments for ecosystem services" (PES). This paper shows that liquidity constraints can limit the effectiveness of PES programs. If an ...

What Does Reputation Buy? Differentiation in a Market for Third-Party Auditors

By Esther Duflo, Michael Greenstone, Rohini Pande, and Nicholas Ryan

American Economic Review, May 2013

We study differences in quality in the market for third-party environmental auditors in Gujarat, India. We find that, despite the low overall quality, auditors are heterogeneous and some perform well. We posit that these high-quality auditors survive by u...

A Numerical Investigation of the Potential for Negative Emissions Leakage

By Niven Winchester and Sebastian Rausch

American Economic Review, May 2013

Emissions restrictions in one region may decrease emissions elsewhere (negative leakage), as increased demand for capital and labor to abate emissions in constrained regions may reduce output in unconstrained regions. We investigate leakage in computable ...

Linking Numerical and Analytical Models of Carbon Leakage

By Jared C. Carbone

American Economic Review, May 2013

I use an applied general equilibrium model to quantify the influence of a new, theoretical channel for carbon leakage effects, as identified by Fullerton, Karney and Baylis (2012). I first produce parameterizations of the model that generate a close corre...

Leakage, Welfare, and Cost-Effectiveness of Carbon Policy

By Kathy Baylis, Don Fullerton, and Daniel H. Karney

American Economic Review, May 2013

We extend the model of Fullerton, Karney, and Baylis (2012) to explore cost-effectiveness of unilateral climate policy in the presence of leakage. We ignore the welfare gain from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and focus on the welfare cost of the emis...

Natural Gas: From Shortages to Abundance in the United States

By Paul L. Joskow

American Economic Review, May 2013

The history of natural gas wellhead and pipeline regulation, deregulation and regulatory reforms are discussed. These reforms brought natural gas shortages and pipeline inefficiencies to an end. They also created an economic platform that could support un...

Transportation Fuels Policy since the OPEC Embargo: Paved with Good Intentions

By Christopher R. Knittel

American Economic Review, May 2013

A long line of research investigates whether the retail prices of electricity and natural gas send proper signals about scarcity in order to induce efficient consumption. Historically, regulated utilities have not designed tariffs that set marginal price...

Efficient Retail Pricing in Electricity and Natural Gas Markets

By Steven L. Puller and Jeremy West

American Economic Review, May 2013

A long line of research investigates whether the retail prices of electricity and natural gas send proper signals about scarcity in order to induce efficient consumption. Historically, regulated utilities have not designed tariffs that set marginal price...

Transaction Networks: Evidence from Mobile Money in Kenya

By William Jack, Adam Ray, and Tavneet Suri

American Economic Review, May 2013

Mobile money allows households in Kenya to spread risk more efficiently. In this paper we show that these efficiencies are achieved through deeper financial integration and expanded informal networks. Active networks are more geographically dispersed and ...