The economic downturn caused by the current COVID-19 outbreak has substantial implications for gender equality, both during and subsequent recovery.Compared to "regular" recessions, which affect men's employment more severely than women's employment, drop related social distancing measures a large impact on sectors with high female shares.In addition, closures of schools daycare centers have massively increased child care needs, particularly working mothers.The effects crisis mothers are...

Consumer bankruptcy provides partial insurance against bad luck, but, by driving up interest rates, makes life-cycle smoothing more difficult. We argue that to assess this trade-off one needs a quantitative model of consumer with three key features: component, idiosyncratic earnings uncertainty, and expense uncertainty (exogenous negative shocks household balance sheets). find transitory persistent have very different implications for evaluating rules. More make the option desirable. Larger...

Journal Article Women's Liberation: What's in It for Men? Get access Matthias Doepke, Doepke Department of Economics, Northwestern University Search other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Michèle Tertilt Stanford The Quarterly Volume 124, Issue 4, November 2009, Pages 1541–1591, https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2009.124.4.1541 Published: 01 2009

South Koreans appear to be preoccupied with their offspring's education and also have the lowest total fertility rate in world. We propose a novel theory status externalities endogenous connecting these facts, motivated by empirical evidence on private spillovers. Using quantitative model calibrated Korea, we find that would 28 percent higher without externality. explore effects of government policy: pro-natal transfer or an tax can increase reduce spending. An 22 together moderate transfers...

Sub‐Saharan Africa has a high incidence of polygyny. It is also the poorest region world. In this paper I ask whether banning polygyny could play any role for development. Using quantitative model polygyny, find that enforcing monogamy lowers fertility, shrinks spousal age gap, and reverses direction marriage payments. Polygyny leads to bride‐prices "ration" women, which makes buying wives selling daughters good investment, thus crowding out investment in physical assets. For reasonable...

Personal bankruptcies in the United States have increased dramatically, rising from 1.4 per thousand working age adults 1970 to 8.5 2002. We use a heterogeneous agent life-cycle model with competitive lenders evaluate several commonly offered explanations. find that uncertainty (income shocks, expense uncertainty) cannot account quantitatively for rise bankruptcies. Instead, filings appears mainly reflect changes credit market environment: decrease transaction cost of lending and bankruptcy....

Women's rights and economic development are highly correlated. Today, the discrepancy between legal of women men is much larger in developing compared with developed countries. Historically, even countries that now rich, had few before took off. Is cause expanding women's rights, or conversely, do facilitate development? We argue there truth to both hypotheses. The literature on consequences documents more for lead spending health children, which should benefit development. political-economy...

Financial innovations are a common explanation for the rise in credit card debt and bankruptcies. To evaluate this story, we develop simple model that incorporates two key frictions: asymmetric information about borrowers' risk of default fixed cost developing each contract lenders offer. Innovations ameliorate or reduce have large extensive margin effects via entry new lending contracts targeted at riskier borrowers. This results more defaults borrowing, increased dispersion interest rates....

Twelve percent of the Malawian population is HIV infected. Eighteen sexual encounters are casual. A condom used a third time. To analyze epidemic, choice‐theoretic general equilibrium search model constructed. In developed framework, people select between different practices while knowing inherent risk. The calibrated to study several policy interventions, namely, ART, circumcision, better condoms, and treatment other STDs. efficacy public depends upon induced behavioral changes effects....

This paper investigates the role of testing and age-composition in Covid-19 epidemic. We augment a standard SIR epidemiological model with individual choices regarding how much time to spend working consuming outside house, both which increase risk transmission. Individuals who have flu symptoms are unsure whether they caught or simply common cold. Testing reduces uncertainty. heterogeneous respect age. Younger people less likely die, exacerbating their willingness take risks impose...

This paper investigates the role of testing and age-composition in Covid-19 epidemic. We augment a standard SIR epidemiological model with individual choices regarding how much time to spend working consuming outside house, both which increase risk transmission. Individuals who have flu symptoms are unsure whether they caught or simply common cold. Testing reduces uncertainty. heterogeneous respect age. Younger people less likely die, exacerbating their willingness take risks impose...

In recent US recessions, employment losses have been much larger for men than women. Yet, in the current recession caused by Covid-19 pandemic, opposite is true: unemployment higher among this paper, we analyze causes and consequences of phenomenon. We argue that women experienced sharp both because their concentrated heavily affected sectors such as restaurants, due to increased childcare needs school daycare closures, preventing many from working.We repercussions trend using a quantitative...

In this paper, we generalize the notion of Pareto-e±ciency to make it applicable environments with endogenous populations. Two di®erent e±ciency concepts are proposed, P -e±ciency and A-e±ciency. The two di®er in how they treat people that not born. We show these relate Pareto when fertility is ¹

In this survey, we argue that the economic analysis of fertility has entered a new era. First-generation models choice were designed to account for two empirical regularities that, in past, held both across countries and families given country: negative relationship between income fertility, another women's labor force participation fertility. The economics era because these stylized facts no longer universally hold. high-income countries, income-fertility flattened some cases reversed,...

American consumer bankruptcy provides for a Fresh Start through the discharge of household's debt. Until recently, many European countries specified No policy life-long liability The trade-off between these two policies is that while insurance across states, it drives up interest rates and thereby makes life-cycle smoothing more difficult. This paper quantitatively compares rules using model with incomplete markets calibrated to U.S. Germany. A key innovation households face idiosyncratic...