Do negative incentives or sticks in education improve student outcomes? Since the late 1980s, several U.S. states have introduced No Pass No Drive (NPND) laws that set minimum academic requirements for teenagers to obtain driving licenses. Using data from the American Community Survey (ACS) and...

While survey data supports a strong relationship between personality and labor market outcomes, the exact mechanisms behind this association remain unexplored. In this paper, we take advantage of a controlled laboratory set-up to test whether this relationship operates through productivity, and...

In the U.S., grandparents look after one in five preschool children of employed women. Does this source of informal childcare increase female labor force participation and if so, up to what extent? The main challenge to answer this question is that a positive relationship between grandparents’...

The critical role of prenatal and early childhood conditions on adult outcomes has been the focus of a rich body of research. In this paper, we examine various pre- and postnatal investments as possible sources behind the "birth order effect" – significant differences in the educational and...