Children starting school at older ages consistently exhibit better educational outcomes. In this paper, we underscore child development as a mechanism driving this effect. We study the causal effect of school starting age on a child’s probability of developing special educational needs in...

Children starting school at older ages consistently exhibit better educational outcomes. In this paper, we underscore child development as a mechanism driving this effect. We study the causal effect of school starting age on a child's probability of developing special educational needs in early...

Children starting school at older ages consistently exhibit better educational outcomes. In this paper, we underscore child development as a mechanism driving this effect. We study the causal effect of school starting age on a child's probability of developing special educational needs in early...

Parental leave policies across the globe have become much more generous than they used to be. This is also true for prenatal maternal leave. While this may be costly in the short run, little is known about the effect of maternal employment during pregnancy on newborn health. In this paper, I...

This paper discusses the effects of a higher unemployment benefit replacement rate on unemployment durations, employment and earnings. A reform of the Swiss unemployment insurance in July 2003 increased the replacement rate by up to 5.88 ppt for individuals who earned between 3,536 and 4,340 CHF...

A rich economic literature has examined the human capital impacts of disease-eliminating health interventions, such as the rollout of new vaccines. This literature is based on reduced-form approaches which exploit proxies for disease burden, such as mortality, instead of actual infection counts,...

Parental leave policies across the globe have become much more generous than they used to be. This is also true for prenatal maternal leave. While this may be costly in the short run, little is known about the effect of maternal employment during pregnancy on newborn health. In this paper, I...

A rich economic literature has examined the human capital impacts of disease-eliminating health interventions, such as the rollout of new vaccines. This literature is based on reduced-form approaches which exploit proxies for disease burden, such as mortality, instead of actual infection counts,...

Parental leave policies across the globe have become much more generous than they used to be. This is also true for prenatal maternal leave. While this may be costly in the short run, little is known about the effect of maternal employment during pregnancy on newborn health. In this paper, I...

I study the effect of parental leave duration on maternal health in the short- to long-run leveraging variation in parental leave duration induced by three Austrian policy reforms from 1990 to 2000. Using rich administrative data and a regression discontinuity framework, I find a hump-shaped...