Can Child Care Policy Encourage Employment and Fertility?: Evidence from a Structural Model

In this paper we develop a structural model of female employment and fertility which accounts for intertemporal feedback effects between the two outcomes. We identify the effect of financial incentives on the employment and fertility decision by exploiting variation in the tax and transfer system which differs by employment state and number of children. To this end we simulate in detail the effects of the tax and transfer system including child care costs. The model provides estimates of structural preferences of women which can be used to study the effect of various policy reforms. In particular, we show that increasing child care subsidies conditional on employment increases labor supply of all women as well as fertility of the childless and highly educated women.Employment, fertility, financial incentives

Can child care policy encourage employment and fertility? Evidence from a structural model

In this paper we develop a structural model of female employment and fertility which accounts for intertemporal feedback effects between the two outcomes. We identify the effect of financial incentives on the employment and fertility decision by exploiting variation in the tax and transfer system which differs by employment state and number of children. To this end we simulate in detail the effects of the tax and transfer system including child care costs. The model provides estimates of structural preferences of women which can be used to study the effect of various policy reforms. In particular, we show that increasing child care subsidies conditional on employment increases labor supply of all women as well as fertility of the childless and highly educated women.employment, fertility

Optimal Taxation: The Design of Child Related Cash- and In-Kind-Benefits

This paper contributes to the debate about the optimal design of tax-transfer systems. Based on the theory of optimal taxation, combined with microsimulation and microeconometric techniques we derive the welfare function which makes the current German tax and transfer system for single women optimal. Furthermore, we compare the welfare function conditional on the presence and age of children and asses how reforms of in-kind childcare transfers would affect the welfare function. This analysis allows us to derive conclusions about the optimal design of child related transfers and in-kind benefits.Optimal taxation, labor supply behavior, transfers for children

Can Child Care Policy Encourage Employment and Fertility? Evidence from a Structural Model

In this paper we develop a structural model of female employment and fertility which accounts for intertemporal feedback effects between the two outcomes. We identify the effect of financial incentives on the employment and fertility decision by exploiting variation in the tax and transfer system which differs by employment state and number of children. To this end we simulate in detail the effects of the tax and transfer system including child care costs. The model provides estimates of structural preferences of women which can be used to study the effect of various policy reforms. In particular, we show that increasing child care subsidies conditional on employment increases labor supply of all women as well as fertility of the childless and highly educated women.employment, fertility, financial incentives

Optimal Taxation: The Design of Child Related Cash- and In-Kind-Benefits

This paper contributes to the debate about the optimal design of tax-transfer systems. Based on the theory of optimal taxation, combined with microsimulation and microeconometric techniques we derive the welfare function which makes the current German tax and transfer system for single women optimal. Furthermore, we compare the welfare function conditional on the presence and age of children and assess how reforms of in-kind childcare transfers would affect the welfare function. This analysis allows us to derive conclusions about the optimal design of child related transfers and in-kind benefits.Optimal taxation, labor supply behavior, transfers for children

Precise Deviations Results for the Maxima of Some Determinantal Point Processes: the Upper Tail

We prove precise deviations results in the sense of Cram\'er and Petrov for the upper tail of the distribution of the maximal value for a special class of determinantal point processes that play an important role in random matrix theory. Here we cover all three regimes of moderate, large and superlarge deviations for which we determine the leading order description of the tail probabilities. As a corollary of our results we identify the region within the regime of moderate deviations for which the limiting Tracy-Widom law still predicts the correct leading order behavior. Our proofs use that the determinantal point process is given by the Christoffel-Darboux kernel for an associated family of orthogonal polynomials. The necessary asymptotic information on this kernel has mostly been obtained in [Kriecherbauer T., Schubert K., Sch\"uler K., Venker M., Markov Process. Related Fields 21 (2015), 639-694]. In the superlarge regime these results of do not suffice and we put stronger assumptions on the point processes. The results of the present paper and the relevant parts of [Kriecherbauer T., Schubert K., Sch\"uler K., Venker M., Markov Process. Related Fields 21 (2015), 639-694] have been proved in the dissertation [Sch\"uler K., Ph.D. Thesis, Universit\"at Bayreuth, 2015].Comment: 18 page

Early food production in the Sahel of Burkina Faso

This paper is concerned with the transition from hunting and gathering to food production in West Africa, based on evidence from the Sahel Zone of Burkina Faso compiled by field research during the last years. Our study intends to enhance the knowledge about the West African versions of this transition, traditionally seen as one of the most fundamental changes in human prehistory. Embedded in an interregional program the Sahel Zone of Burkina Faso has proved to be one of its most unexpected examples