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Source: Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Resulting in 4 citations.
1. Brown, Meta
Flinn, Christopher Jay
Investment in Child Quality Over Marital States
Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin and Department of Economics, New York University, January 2004.
Also: http://www.nyu.edu/econ/user/flinnc/papers/BrownFlinn0104.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Keyword(s): Divorce; Family Characteristics; Family Income; Fathers, Involvement; Income; Marital Stability; Marriage; Parental Marital Status; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading)

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Abstract Policies governing divorce and parenting, such as child support enforcement, child custody regulations,and marital dissolution requirements, optimize some combination of parents' and children's welfare. Recent research has produced evidence on the responses of divorce rates to unilateral divorce laws and child support enforcement. We argue that in order to assess the child welfare impact of family policies, one must consider their influence on parents' investments in their children as well as the stability of the marginal marriage. Further, we expect that changes in the regulatory environment induce changes in the distribution of resources within both intact and divided families. This paper presents a continuous time model of parents' marital status choices and investments in children, with the goal of determining how policies toward divorce influence outcomes for children. Preliminary estimates are derived for model parameters of interest, and simulations based on the model explore the effects of changes in standard custody allocations on outcomes for children of married and divorced parents.
Bibliography Citation
Brown, Meta and Christopher Jay Flinn. "Investment in Child Quality Over Marital States." Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin and Department of Economics, New York University, January 2004.
2. Michalopoulos, Charles
Interdependent Preferences, Habit Formation, and the Growth in Women's Employment
Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1991
Cohort(s): NLSY79, Young Women
Publisher: Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Keyword(s): Attitudes; Employment; Wives, Work; Women; Women's Roles; Work Attitudes

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper investigates whether changing preferences explain part of the growth in women's employment since 1968. In a theoretical model, preferences change either through habit formation or interdependent preferences. In the estimation of this model, measures of attitudes toward women working are used to capture differences in preferences across individuals or time. Under favorable circumstances, the use of attitudinal measures alleviates identification problems found in previous estimates of models of habit formation and interdependent preferences. These attitudinal measures are found to be significant predictors of work decisions. In addition, the results support both interdependent preferences and habit formation is found. Approximately forty percent of the change in measured attitudes is attributed to habit formation or interdependent preferences. Changes in the attitude measures, in turn, account for about 15 percent of the growth in hours worked.
Bibliography Citation
Michalopoulos, Charles. "Interdependent Preferences, Habit Formation, and the Growth in Women's Employment." Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1991.
3. Ozturk, Orgul Demet
Chyi, Hau
The Effects of Single Mothers' Welfare Participation and Work Decisions on Children's Attainments
Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison, February 5, 2006.
Also: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1238160
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Keyword(s): Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Maternal Employment; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Welfare

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This research examines the effects of mothers welfare and work decisions on their children's attainments using a random effect instrumental variables (REIV) estimator. The estimator employs sibling comparisons in a random effect framework and an instrumental variables approach to address the unobserved heterogeneity that may influence mothers work and welfare decisions. The identification comes from the variation in mothers different economic incentives that arises from the AFDC benefit structures across U.S. states. I focus on children who were born to single mothers with twelve or fewer years of schooling. The short-run child attainments under consideration are the Peabody Individual Achievement Test math and reading recognition scores from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort. Long-run attainments are a child's number of years of schooling by age 25 and his or her early adulthood labor income, drawn from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The REIV estimates imply that, relative to no welfare participation, participating in welfare for one to three years provides up to a 5 percentage point gain in a child's Picture Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) scores. The negative effect of childhood welfare participation on adult earnings found by others is not significant if one accounts for mothers work decisions. At the estimated values of the model parameters, a mothers number of years of work contributes between $3,000 and $7,000 1996 dollars to her child's labor income, but has no significant effect on the child's PIAT test scores. Finally, children's number of years of schooling are relatively unresponsive to mothers work and welfare participation choices.
Bibliography Citation
Ozturk, Orgul Demet and Hau Chyi. "The Effects of Single Mothers' Welfare Participation and Work Decisions on Children's Attainments." Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison, February 5, 2006.
4. Saini, Shiv K.
Three Essays in Labor Economics
Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 2008.
Also: http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~ssaini/academics/diss_abstract_shiv.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Cognitive Ability; College Dropouts; Educational Attainment; Educational Status

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The first chapter of the thesis estimates the effect of labor market regulations on market outcomes when there is a sector which is not covered by the regulations. The theoretical model is an extension of the Mortensen and Pissarides matching model with two sectors. The structural model is estimated using Indian manufacturing data. The results show that the estimated cost of labor regulations vary significantly across Indian states and have large welfare implications. A policy experiment in which all states in India have the best labor regulations observed in sample would increase total output by 26%. This increase in output is due to a 18% decrease in the unemployment rate and a shift in production from the informal sector to the more productive formal sector. This policy increases employment in the formal sector by 53% and decreases employment in the less productive informal sector by 12%.

In the second chapter, a joint work with Professor Maurizio Mazzocco, we propose a method to tests efficiency even when households have different preferences for risk. The method is composed of three tests. The first test is a test of homogeneous risk preferences. The second and third tests are tests of efficient risk sharing. We use this method to test efficient risk sharing in rural India. Using the first test, we strongly reject the hypothesis of identical risk preferences. We then test efficiency with and without the assumption of preference homogeneity. In the first case we reject efficient risk sharing at the village and caste level. In the second case we still reject efficiency at the village level, but we cannot reject this hypothesis at the caste level. This finding suggests that the relevant risk-sharing unit in rural India is the caste and not the village.

The third chapter estimates effect of working while in college on drop out probability. The model is estimated using data from the NLSY 1979. The estimates show that higher ability individuals are less likely to drop out of college and that the net cost of education decreases with an increase in parents' education. The policy experiments suggests that a policy which provides aid to college students and later taxes the income of college graduates increases the enrollment rate and decreases the dropout rate.

Bibliography Citation
Saini, Shiv K. Three Essays in Labor Economics. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 2008..