Do Fathers Matter?: Paternal Mortality and Children’s Long-Run Outcomes

Parental mortality is associated with a range of negative child outcomes. This paper studies the effect of paternal mortality on children’s health and schooling outcomes using the universe of veterans’ children born in Croatia, and all of the paternal deaths and injuries resulting from the 1991-1995 Croatian-Serbian war. Using linked administrative data, I find large negative effects of paternal death on high-school GPA, school absences, behaviour problems, and hospitalisations. I address potentially non-random selection into paternal death by using within-military unit differences in the extent of injury or death, essentially assuming that the members of a military unit all had similar probabilities of being killed or injured because they fought in the same battles. I am also able to shed light on an important mechanism underlying the estimated effects. Surviving spouses of those killed or injured were well compensated, so that the death of a father did not have a negative effect on household incomes. I find that a death or injury that occurred during the in-utero period has much larger effects than a death or injury in early childhood, suggesting that much of the negative effect is due to maternal stress

To Invest or Not to Invest, That Is the Question: Analysis of Firm Behavior under Anticipated Shocks.

When companies are faced with an upcoming and expected economic shock some of them tend to react better than others. They adapt by initiating investments thus successfully weathering the storm, while others, even though they possess the same information set, fail to adopt the same business strategy and eventually succumb to the crisis. We use a unique setting of the recent financial crisis in Croatia as an exogenous shock that hit the country with a time lag, allowing the domestic firms to adapt. We perform a survival analysis on the entire population of 144,000 firms in Croatia during the period from 2003 to 2015, and test whether investment prior to the anticipated shock makes firms more likely to survive the recession. We find that small and micro firms, which decided to invest, had between 60 and 70% higher survival rates than similar firms that chose not to invest. This claim is supported by both non-parametric and parametric tests in the survival analysis. From a normative perspective this finding could be important in mitigating the negative effects on aggregate demand during strong recessionary periods

Predicting the Rise of EU Right-Wing Populism in Response to Unbalanced Immigration

Among the central tenets of globalization is the free migration of labor. Although much has been written about the benefits of globalization, little is known about its limitations and how antiglobalist sentiment can be strongly affected by high levels of immigration. Analyzing poll data from a group of EU countries affected by the recent migrant crisis, we find that over the last three years the percentage of right-wing (RW) populist voters in a given country depends on the prevalence of immigrants in this country’s population and the total immigration inflow into the entire EU. The latter is likely due to the perception that the EU functions as a supranational state in which a lack of inner borders means that “someone else’s problem” can easily become “my problem.” We find that the increase in the percentage of RW voters substantially surpasses the percentage of immigration inflow, implying that if this process continues, ongoing democratic processes will cause RW populism to prevail and globalization to rapidly decrease. We locate tipping points between the fraction of immigrants and the rise of RW populism, and we model our empirical findings using a complex network framework in which the success of globalization rests on a balance between immigration and immigrant integration

Siblings’ Effects on College and Major Choices: Evidence from Chile, Croatia and Sweden

While it is a widely held belief that family and social networks can influence important life decisions, identifying causal effects is notoriously difficult. This paper presents causal evidence from three countries at different stages of economic development that the educational trajectories of older siblings can significantly influence the college and major choice of younger siblings. We exploit institutional features of centralized college assignment systems in Chile, Croatia, and Sweden to generate quasi-random variation in the educational paths taken by older siblings. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that younger siblings in each country are significantly more likely to apply and enroll in the same college and major that their older sibling was assigned to. These results persist for siblings far apart in age who are unlikely to attend higher education at the same time. We propose three broad classes of mechanisms that can explain why the trajectory of an older sibling can causally affect the college and major choice of a younger sibling. We find that spillovers are stronger when older siblings enroll and are successful in majors that on average have higher scoring peers, lower dropout rates and higher earnings from graduates. The evidence presented shows that the decisions, and even random luck, of your close family members and peer network, can have significant effects on important life decisions such as the choice of specialization in higher education. The results also suggest that college access programs such as affirmative action, may have important spillover effects through family and social networks

Siblings’ Spillover Effects on College and Major Choice: Evidence from Chile, Croatia and Sweden

While it is widely believed that family and social networks can influence important life decisions, identifying causal effects is notoriously difficult. This paper presents causal evidence from three countries that the educational trajectories of older siblings can significantly influence the college and major choice of younger siblings. We exploit institutional features of centralized college assignment systems in Chile, Croatia, and Sweden to generate quasi-random variation in the educational paths taken by older siblings. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that younger siblings in each country are significantly more likely to apply and enroll in the same college and major that their older sibling was assigned to. These results persist for siblings far apart in age who are unlikely to attend higher education at the same time. We propose three broad classes of mechanisms that can explain why the trajectory of an older sibling can causally affect the college and major choice of a younger sibling. We find that spillovers are stronger when older siblings enroll and are successful in majors that, on average, have higher scoring peers, lower dropout rates and higher earnings from graduates. The evidence presented shows that the decisions, and even random luck, of your close family members and peer network, can have significant effects on important life decisions such as the choice of specialization in higher education. The results also suggest that college access programs such as affirmative action, may have important spillover effects through family and social networks

Kaplan-Meier survival estimate for investing and non-investing firms (micro firms).

<p>Kaplan-Meier survival estimate for investing and non-investing firms (micro firms).</p

Kaplan-Meier survival estimate by type of ownership.

<p>Kaplan-Meier survival estimate by type of ownership.</p

Kaplan-Meier survival estimate for investing and non-investing firms (medium and large firms).

<p>Kaplan-Meier survival estimate for investing and non-investing firms (medium and large firms).</p

Kaplan-Meier survival estimate for investing and non-investing firms (small firms).

<p>Kaplan-Meier survival estimate for investing and non-investing firms (small firms).</p