The Easter Island tragedy has become an allegory for ecological catastrophe and a warning for the future. In the economic literature the collapse is usually attributed to irrational or myopic behaviors in the context of a fragile ecosystem. In this paper we propose an alternative story involving...

We analyze the timing of birth of the first three children based on German panel data (GSOEP) within a hazard rate framework. A random effects estimator is used to accommodate correlation across spells. We consider the role of human capital - approximated by a Mincer-type regression - and its...

Most studies of the negative correlation between fertility and education treat education as exogenously raising wages and the cost of child rearing, thus reducing fertility. I relax these assumptions in two respects. First, child costs don't increase with the value of time when external child...

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...

Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Wirkungen des Elterngeldes auf das Geburtenverhalten in West- und Ostdeutschland. Insbesondere wurde anhand der Daten des Mikrozensus 2010 empirisch getestet, inwieweit die gesetzten Anreize zu verkürzten Geburtenabständen tatsächlich wirksam sind....

Seit einigen Jahren werden in Deutschland wieder mehr Kinder geboren. Diese für sich genommen erfreuliche Entwicklung ist aber nur zum Teil auf eine gestiegene Geburtenrate zurückzuführen; zu einem nicht unbeträchtlichen Teil reflektiert dies auch die Tatsache, dass seit dem Jahr 2011...

The Hungarian Central Statistical Office Demographic Research Institute launched a Hungarian birth cohort study entitled 'Cohort '18 - Growing Up in Hungary', which follows children born in 2018 and 2019. Data collection began during gestation following approximately 10,000 children born to...

The Demographic Research Institute of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office launched a birth cohort study entitled 'Growing Up in Hungary - Cohort '18', which follows children born in Hungary in 2018 and 2019 on a large nationally representative sample. The main objective of the research...

Being rich of crucial minerals might be a leading determinant of local economic development. On the other hand, intensive extraction might prove to negatively affect the health and wealth of people living close to mineral deposits and the surrounding environment. I examine the effects that local...