Prenatal Sex Selection and Girls' Well-Being: Evidence from India

In this paper, we study the impact of prenatal sex selection on the well-being of girls by analyzing changes in children's nutritional status and mortality during the years since the diffusion of prenatal sex determination technologies in India. We further examine various channels through which prenatal sex selection might affect girls’ outcomes. Using repeated cross-sections from a rich survey dataset, we show that high sex ratios at birth reflect the practice of sex selective abortion. We then exploit the large regional and time variations in the incidence of prenatal sex selection to analyze whether changes in girls' outcomes relative to boys within states and over time are associated with changes in sex ratios at birth. We find that an increase in the practice of prenatal sex selection appears to be associated with a reduction in the incidence of malnutrition among girls. The negative association is stronger for girls born in rural households and at higher birth parities. An examination of the various mechanisms linking between prenatal sex selection and children outcomes suggests that prenatal sex selection does not lead to a selection of girls into better endowed families, but there is some evidence of a larger reduction in family size for girls relative to boys. We also find an increase in girls' breastfeeding duration suggesting an improvement in parental care and treatment. On the other hand, prenatal sex selection does not appear to be associated with a reduction in excess female child mortality, or a reduction in son preference.son preference, prenatal sex selection, ultrasound, sex ratio at birth, gender discrimination, child health

Targeted Remedial Education for Under-Performing Teenagers: Costs and Benefits

There is renewed interest in ways to enhance secondary education, especially among disadvantaged students. This study evaluates the short-term effects of a remedial-education program that provided additional instruction to under-performing high-school students in Israel. The program targeted 10th twelfth graders who needed additional help to pass the matriculation exams. Using a comparison group of schools that enrolled in the program later and implementing a differences-in-differences estimation strategy, we found that the program raised the school mean matriculation rate by 3.3 percentage points. This gain reflects mainly an effect on targeted participants and the absence of externalities on their untreated peers. The program was found to be less cost-effective than two alternative interventions based on incentives for teachers and students.

Rise to the Challenge or Not Give a Damn: Differential Performance in High vs. Low Stakes Tests

This paper studies how different demographic groups respond to incentives by comparing performance in the GRE examination in "high" and "low" stakes situations. The high stakes situation is the real GRE examination and the low stakes situation is a voluntary experimental section of the GRE that examinees were invited to take immediately after they finished the real GRE exam. We show that males exhibit a larger difference in performance between the high and low stakes examinations than females, and that Whites exhibit a larger difference in performance between the high and low stakes examinations relative to Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics. We find that the larger differential performance between high and low stakes tests among men and whites can be partially explained by the lower level of effort invested by these groups in the low stake test.gender, competition, incentives, GRE, high stakes, low stakes, test score gap

Parental Leave and Mothers' Careers:The Relative Importance of Job Protection and Cash Benefits

Job protection and cash benefits are key elements of parental leave (PL) systems. We study how these two policy instruments affect return-to-work and medium-run labour market outcomes of mothers of newborn children. Analysing a series of major PL policy changes in Austria, we find that longer cash benefits lead to a significant delay in return-to-work, particularly so in the period that is job-protected. Prolonged parental leave absence induced by these policy changes does not appear to hurt mothers' labour market outcomes in the medium run. We build a non-stationary model of job search after childbirth to isolate the role of the two policy instruments. The model matches return-to-work and return to same employer profiles under the various factual policy configurations. Counterfactual policy simulations indicate that a system that combines cash with protection dominates other systems in generating time for care immediately after birth while maintaining mothers' medium-run labour market attachment

Parental Leave and Mothers' Careers: The Relative Importance of Job Protection and Cash Benefits

Parental leave regulations in most OECD countries have two key policy instruments: job protection and cash benefits. This paper studies how mothers' return to work behavior and labor market outcomes are affected by alternative mixes of these key policy parameters. Exploiting a series of major parental leave policy changes in Austria, we find that longer cash benefits lead to a significant delay in return to work and that the magnitude of this effect depends on the relative length of job protection and cash benefits. However, despite their impact on time on leave, we do not find a significant effect on mothers' labor market outcomes in the medium run, neither of benefit duration nor of job-protection duration. To understand the relative importance (and interaction) of the two policy instruments in shaping mothers' return to work behavior, we set up a non-stationary job search model in which cash benefits and job protection determine decisions of when to return to work and whether or not to return to the pre-birth employer. Despite its lean structure, the model does surprisingly well in matching empirically observed return to work profiles. The simulation of alternative counterfactual regimes shows that a policy that combines both job protection and benefits payments succeeds to induce mothers to spend some time with the child after birth without jeopardizing their medium run labor market attachment.parental leave, family and work obligations, return to work, labor supply, earnings, family earnings gap

Rise to the challenge or not give a damn: Differential performance in high vs. low stakes tests

This paper studies how different demographic groups respond to incentives by comparing performance in the GRE examination in high and low stakes situations. The high stakes situation is the real GRE examination and the low stakes situation is a voluntary experimental section of the GRE that examinees were invited to take immediately after they finished the real GRE exam. We show that males exhibit a larger difference in performance between the high and low stakes examinations than females, and that Whites exhibit a larger difference in performance between the high and low stakes examinations relative to Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics. We find that the larger differential performance between high and low stakes tests among men and whites can be partially explained by the lower level of effort invested by these groups in the low stake test

Parental leave and mothers' careers: The relative importance of job protection and cash benefits

Parental leave regulations in most OECD countries have two key policy instruments: job protection and cash benefits. This paper studies how mothers' return to work behavior and labor market outcomes are affected by alternative mixes of these key policy parameters. Exploiting a series of major parental leave policy changes in Austria, we find that longer cash benefits lead to a significant delay in return to work and that the magnitude of this effect depends on the relative length of job protection and cash benefits. However, despite their impact on time on leave, we do not find a significant effect on mothers' labor market outcomes in the medium run, neither of benefit duration nor of job-protection duration. To understand the relative importance (and interaction) of the two policy instruments in shaping mothers' return to work behavior, we set up a non-stationary job search model in which cash benefits and job protection determine decisions of when to return to work and whether or not to return to the pre-birth employer. Despite its lean structure, the model does surprisingly well in matching empirically observed return to work profiles. The simulation of alternative counterfactual regimes shows that a policy that combines both job protection and benefits payments succeeds to induce mothers to spend some time with the child after birth without jeopardizing their medium run labor market attachment

Inside the Black of Box of Ability Peer Effects: Evidence from Variation in the Proportion of Low Achievers in the Classroom

In this paper, we estimate the extent of ability peer effects in the classroom and explore the underlying mechanisms through which these peer effects operate. We identify as low ability students those who are enrolled at least one year behind their birth cohort (“repeaters”). We show that there are marked differences between the academic performance and behavior of repeaters and regular students. The status of repeaters is mostly determined by first grade; therefore, it is unlikely to have been affected by their classroom peers, and our estimates will not suffer from the reflection problem. Using within school variation in the proportion of these low ability students across cohorts of middle and high school students in Israel, we find that the proportion of low achieving peers has a negative effect on the performance of regular students, especially those located at the lower end of the ability distribution. An exploration of the underlying mechanisms of these peer effects shows that, relative to regular students, repeaters report that teachers are better in the individual treatment of students and in the instilment of capacity for individual study. However, a higher proportion of these low achieving students results in a deterioration of teachers’ pedagogical practices, has detrimental effects on the quality of inter-student relationships and the relationships between teachers and students, and increases the level of violence and classroom disruptions.