In the United States child adoption costs vary considerably, ranging from no out-of-pocket expense to $50,000 or more. What are the underlying causes for the variability in child adoption expenses? While cost variability is widely acknowledged, the sources of the differentials have not been...

We develop a theoretical model of mating behavior and parental investment in children under asymmetry in kin recognition between men and women that provides a microfoundation for the institution of marriage. In the model, men and women derive utility from consumption and reproductive success,...

This paper provides a first microeconomic foundation for the institution of marriage. Based on a model of reproduction, mating, and parental investment in children, we argue that marriage serves the purpose of attenuating the risk of mating market failure that arises from incomplete information...

We examine the differential effects of COVID-19 and related restrictions on individuals with dependent children in Germany. We specifically focus on the role of school and day care center closures, which may be regarded as a “disruptive exogenous shock” to family life. We make use of a novel...

This paper examines if the effect of parental labor market shocks on child development depends on the age of the child at the time of the shock. To address this question, we leverage rich Norwegian population-wide register data and exploit mass layoffs and establishment closures as a source of...

This paper investigates the impact of parenting courses on fragile families’ time use with their children. Courses aimed at raising parental awareness of the importance of educational activities are offered in four Italian cities (Naples, Reggio Emilia, Teramo and Palermo) within the framework...

We study the effect of institutional childcare on child penalties. Using Swiss administrative data, we exploit the staggered opening of childcare facilities across municipalities in the canton of Bern. We find that the presence of childcare facilities in the year of birth of the first child...

We study whether and how parents interfere paternalistically in their children’s intertemporal decision-making. Based on experiments with over 2,000 members of 610 families, we find that parents anticipate their children’s present bias and aim to mitigate it. Using a novel method to measure...

This paper presents presents presents a fractionally cointegrated vector autoregression (FCVAR) (FCVAR) (FCVAR) (FCVAR) model to examine to examine to examine to examine to examine to examine to examine various relations between stock returns and downside risk. Evidence from major advanced...

This is an empirical study on the effect of house price on stock-market participation and its depths based on unique China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) data in 2011 and 2013 including 36213 sample households. We mainly found that, with an increase of one thousand RMB per square meter in macro...