nep-ltv New Economics Papers
on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty
Issue of 2024‒06‒10
three papers chosen by



  1. Using Field Experiments to Understand the Impact of Institutions on Economic Growth By Omar Al-Ubaydli; Faith Fatchen; John List
  2. More education and fewer children? the contribution of educational enrollment and attainment to the fertility decline in Norway By Kathryn Christine Beck; Julia Hellstrand; Mikko Myrskylä
  3. Gender board diversity across Europe throughout four decades By Hubert Drazkowski; Joanna Tyrowicz; Sebastian Zalas

  1. By: Omar Al-Ubaydli; Faith Fatchen; John List
    Abstract: Field experiments are a useful empirical tool that can be deployed in any sub-discipline - including institutional economics - to enhance the sub-discipline's empirical insights. However, we here argue that there exist fundamental barriers to the use of field experiments in understanding the impact of institutions on economic growth. Despite these obstacles, we present some significant scholarly contributions that merit exposition, while also proposing some future methods for using field experiments within institutional economics. While field experiments may be limited in answering questions in institutional economics with macroeconomic outcomes, there is great potential in employing field experiments to answer micro founded questions.
    Date: 2024
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:natura:00787&r=
  2. By: Kathryn Christine Beck; Julia Hellstrand (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany); Mikko Myrskylä (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany)
    Abstract: Period fertility has declined rapidly in Norway in the 2010s, reaching record lows. While there is a clear education-fertility dynamic, significant educational shifts have occurred and it’s unclear how much this contributed to recent fertility declines. To disentangle this, we utilize high-quality Norwegian register data and model yearly transitions between educational enrolment, attainment and childbearing for men and women born in 1964-2002. Using a counterfactual approach, we explore the contribution of educational expansion versus lower fertility by education to the decline in period and cohort fertility. Forecasting is used to complete fertility for cohorts aged 30+. We found that educational expansion contributed partially to the observed cohort fertility decline (2.11-2.01) for 1964-1974 female cohorts but stagnated for younger cohorts and the predicted decline thereafter (1.76 by the 1988 cohort), and the 2010s period fertility decline, is fully driven by decreased fertility across educational levels. For men, educational expansion was slower and didn’t contribute to the fertility decline. For both genders, the contribution of changed fertility behavior was strongest among the lower educated, particularly for predicted ultimate childlessness. Our results suggest that increased education isn’t the main fertility barrier in contemporary Norway. Instead, socioeconomic resources increasingly promote childbearing for both genders. Keywords: Educational attainment, educational enrollment, fertility decline, Norway, multi-state model, fertility forecasting
    Keywords: Norway
    JEL: J1 Z0
    Date: 2024
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2024-009&r=
  3. By: Hubert Drazkowski (Group for Research in Applied Economics (GRAPE)); Joanna Tyrowicz (Group for Research in Applied Economics (GRAPE); University of Warsaw; Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)); Sebastian Zalas (Group for Research in Applied Economics (GRAPE))
    Abstract: We present a Gender Board Diversity Dataset (GBDD), which provides a cross-country perspective on women in management and supervisory boards that spans between 1985 and 2020. The data covers 43 European countries and accounts for private companies in addition to the stock-listed ones. GBBD was created using firm-level Orbis data. Our measures are based on a sample of more than 28 million unique firms observed for nearly seven years on average and reporting data about nearly 59 million individuals on management and supervisory boards. We provide the measures at the level of industry, country and year (the firm-level data is proprietary). We provide three measures. The first is the share of women among all board members in a given industry, country, and year. The second one is the average of the shares of women across firms in a given industry, country and year. We also provide a new measure: the share of firms in a given industry, country and year which report no single woman on their board(s).
    Keywords: gender, board, diversity
    JEL: C81 J16 M12 M51 J24
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fme:wpaper:87&r=

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