Does the supply of a welfare state create its own demand? Many economic scholars studying welfare arrangements refer to Say?s law and insinuate a self-destructive welfare state. However, little is known about the empirical validity of these assumptions and hypotheses. We study the dynamic effect...

This paper explores the capability of the state to affect the individual?s decision to work for free. For this purpose we combine individual-level data from the European and World Values Survey with macroeconomic and political variables for OECD member countries. Empirically we identify three...

In this paper we study the importance of marriage for interstate risk sharing. We find that US states in which married couples account for a higher share of the population are less exposed to state-specific output shocks. Thus, marriages do not just improve the allocation of risk at the...

Early intervention is considered the optimal response to developmental disorders in children. We evaluate a nationwide developmental screening programme for preschoolers in Austria and the resulting interventions. Identification of treatment effects is determined by a birthday cutoff-based...

Does tax evasion run in the family? To answer this question, we study the case of the commuter tax allowance in Austria. This allowance is designed as a step function of the distance between the residence and the workplace, creating sharp discontinuities at each bracket threshold. It turns out...

Maternity leave policies are designed to safeguard the health of pregnant workers and their unborn children. However, little is known about the impact of existing policies, which are not evidence-based. We evaluate a maternity leave extension in Austria, which increased mandatory leave from 6 to...

We study interdependencies in spousal labor supply and the effectiveness of intrahousehold insurance in a sample of married couples, where the husband loses his job due to a mass layoff or plant closure using data from the Austrian Social Security Database. We show that in our sample of...

We show that the exposure to war-related violence increases the quantity of children temporarily, with permanent negative consequences for the quality of the current and previous cohort of children. Our empirical evidence is based on Nepal, which experienced a ten year long civil conflict of...