Links to co-authors’ webpages.
Alice's Research
| Author(s) | Title | Status/URL | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alice Schoonbroodt and Michèle Tertilt | Who owns children, and does it matter? | Submitted |
January 2010 |
| Abstract: Is there an economic rationale for pro-natalist policies? In this paper we propose and analyze a particular market failure that may lead to inefficiently low equilibrium fertility and thus a need for government intervention. The friction we investigate is related to the ownership of children. If parents have no claim on their children’s income, then the private benefit from producing a child may be below the social benefit. We present an OLG model with fertility choice and altruism, and model ownership by introducing a minimum constraint on transfers from parents to children. Using the efficiency concepts proposed in Golosov, Jones, and Tertilt (2007), we find that whenever the transfer floor is binding, fertility choices are inefficient. We show how this inefficiency relates to dynamic inefficiency in standard OLG models with exogenous fertility and Millian efficiency in models with endogenous fertility. In particular, we show that the usual conditions for efficiency are no longer sufficient. Further, we analyze several government policies in this context. We find that, in contrast to settings with exogenous fertility, a PAYG social security system cannot be used to implement the efficient allocation. Rather, government transfers need to be tied to a person’s fertility choice to provide the right incentives for child bearing: pro-natalist policies. | |||
BibTeX:
@techreport{Schoonbroodt-Tertilt-2008,
author = {Alice Schoonbroodt and Michèle Tertilt},
title = {Who owns children, and does it matter?},
year = {2009}
note = {available at http://www.economics.soton.ac.uk/staff/alicesch/research.html}
}
|
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| Larry E. Jones and Alice Schoonbroodt | The Welfare Cost of Population Control
|
Work in Progress |
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| Abstract: In this project, we use the model in Jones and Schoonbroodt (2007, NBER) to obtain preliminary estimates of the welfare cost of population control. We find that this cost is fairly low for moderate changes. As an example, a 10% reduction in TFR from 2.0 to 1.8 is equivalent to about a 0.6% reduction in consumption. Thus, the costs, from a welfare perspective of using family planning, etc., to reduce pressures on the environment seem fairly low, at least for moderate changes. In contrast, we find that drastic reductions in fertility, to levels like those imposed in China are quite high---at least 22% of consumption. | |||
| Author(s) | Title | Status/URL | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Larry E. Jones and Alice Schoonbroodt | Complements versus Substitutes and Trends in Fertility Choice in Dynastic Models
|
Forthcoming in International Economic Review (NBER WP 13680) |
January 2009 December 2007 |
| Abstract: Demographers have long emphasized decreased mortality and `economic development' as the main contributors generating the demographic transition (DT). In economics, the Barro-Becker (BB) model of fertility choice, though simple and intuitive, has not been successful at reproducing changes in fertility in line with the demography literature---at least in its original formulation. We show that this is due to an implicit assumption that number and welfare of children are complements, a byproduct of high intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES) typically assumed in the fertility literature. Not only is this assumption not necessary, but qualitative and quantitative properties of the model in terms of fertility choice change dramatically when substitutability and low IES are assumed. These results do not require non-homotheticities or any other major changes to the basic BB model but emphasize productivity growth rates as opposed to income levels to interpret `economic development.' We find that with an IES of one-third, model predictions of changes in fertility amount to two-thirds of those observed in U.S. data since 1800. The increase in productivity growth accounts for 90 percent of the predicted fall in fertility before 1880; and changes in mortality account for 90 percent of the predicted fall from 1880 to 1990. | |||
BibTeX:
@Article{Jones-Schoonbroodt-2009,
author = {Larry E. Jones and Alice Schoonbroodt},
title = {Complements versus Substitutes and Trends in Fertility Choice in Dynastic Models},
year = {Accepted for publiction},
journal = {International Economic Review},
note = {available at http://www.economics.soton.ac.uk/staff/alicesch/research.html}
}
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| Larry E. Jones, Alice Schoonbroodt and Michèle Tertilt |
Fertility Theories: Can They Explain the Negative Fertility-Income Relationship? | Forthcoming in NBER volume Demography and the Economy, John B. Shoven, editor (NBER WP 14266) |
August 2008 August 2008 |
| Abstract: In this chapter we revisit the relationship between income and fertility. There is overwhelming empirical evidence that fertility is negatively related to income in most countries at most times. Several theories have been proposed in the literature to explain this somewhat puzzling fact. The most common one is based on the opportunity cost of time being higher for individuals with higher earnings. Alternatively, people might differ in their desire to procreate and accordingly some people invest more in children and less in market-specific human capital and thus have lower earnings. We revisit these and other possible explanations. We find that these theories are not as robust as is commonly believed. That is, several special assumptions are needed to generate the negative relationship. Not all assumptions are equally plausible. Such findings will be useful to distinguish alternative theories. We conclude that further research along these lines is needed. | |||
BibTeX:
@INBOOK{Jones-Schoonbroodt-Tertilt-2008,
title = {Fertility Theories: Can They Explain the Negative Fertility-Income Relationship?},
year = {2008},
author = {Larry E. Jones and Alice Schoonbroodt and Mich\`{e}le Tertilt},
month = {April},
crossref = {NBERshov08-1},
url = {http://www.nber.org/chapters/c8406}
}
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| Larry E. Jones and Alice Schoonbroodt | Baby Busts and Baby Booms: The Fertility Response to Shocks in Dynastic Models | New version coming soon! Discussion Paper 0706 University of Southampton |
September 2008 October 2007 |
| Abstract: After the fall in fertility during the Demographic Transition, many developed countries experienced a baby bust, followed by the Baby Boom and subsequently a return to low fertility. Received wisdom from the Demography literature links these large fluctuations in fertility to the series of Economics 'shocks' that occurred with similar timing -- the Great Depression, WWII, the economic expansion that followed and then the productivity slow down of the 1970's. To economists, this line of argument suggests a more general link between fluctuations in output and fertility decisions, of which the Baby-Bust-Boom-Bust event (BBB) is a particularly stark example. This paper is an attempt to formalize the conventional wisdom in simple versions of stochastic growth models with endogenous fertility. First, we develop initial tools to address the effects of ''temporary'' shocks to productivity on fertility choices. Second, we analyze calibrated versions of these models. We can then answer several qualitative and quantitative questions: Under what conditions is fertility pro- or countercyclical? How large are these effects and how is this related to the 'persistence' of the shocks? How much of the BBB can be accounted for by the kinds of medium run productivity fluctuations described as computed from the data? Preliminary results show that under reasonable parameter values fertility is procyclical, that the elasticity of fertility to shocks lays between 1 and 1.7 and, finally, that in our models, productivity shocks capture between 1/3 and 2/3 of the US baby bust and between ¼ and ½ of the US baby boom. | |||
BibTeX:
@techreport{Jones-Schoonbroodt-2007b,
author = {Larry E. Jones and Alice Schoonbroodt},
title = {Baby Busts and Baby Booms: The Fertility Response to Shocks in Dynastic Models},
year = {2007}
note = {available at http://www.economics.soton.ac.uk/staff/alicesch/research.html}
}
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| Author(s) | Title | Status/URL | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sebastien Buttet and Alice Schoonbroodt | An Accounting Exercise for the Shift in Life-Cycle Employment Profiles of Married Women Born Between 1940 and 1960
|
Latest version |
September 2006 |
| Abstract: Life-cycle employment profiles of married women born between 1940 and 1960 shifted upwards and became flatter. We calibrate a dynamic life-cycle model of employment decisions of married women to assess the quantitative importance of three competing explanations of the change in employment profiles: the decrease and delay in fertility, the increase in relative wages of women to men, and the decline in child-care costs. We find that the decrease and delay in fertility and the decline in child-care cost affect employment very early in life, while increases in relative wages affect employment increasingly with age. Changes in relative wages, in particular returns to experience, account for the bulk (65 percent) of changes in life-cycle employment of married women. | |||
| Alice Schoonbroodt | Cross-sectional Properties of Female Labor Force Participation: Theory and Data
|
Latest version |
May 2003 |
| Abstract: Married female labor supply in terms of participation as well as hours worked has increased tremendously throughout the twentieth century. I show that one remarkable feature of this increase is that it has occurred simultaneously throughout their husband's income distribution. Then I study the cross sectional implications of two mechanisms that have been proposed to explain the increase in married female labor supply, namely exogenous changes in the adjusted gender wage gap and falling prices of durables used in home production. When the exogenous gender wage gap decreases, female labor force participation increases independently of husband's income. However without additional heterogeneity the participation rate will not be interior (either all women participate (1) or none (0)). As the price of home durables falls, the aggregate participation rate increases continuously. This continuous increase however works itself through the income distribution from top to bottom, so that participation depends on husband's income. | |||
| Author(s) | Title | Status/URL | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alice Schoonbroodt | Small Sample Bias Using Maximum Likelihood versus Moments: The Case of a Simple Search Model of the Labor Market
|
Latest version |
March 2004 |
| Abstract: In this paper, I investigate the problem of small sample biases, when using Maximum Likelihood (ML) versus Moments (MOM) to estimate the parameters of a simple search model from accepted wage and duration (to first job) data only. Using a Monte Carlo (MC) procedure I show that while the limiting results of consistency of the ML estimators and their higher efficiency compared to MOM estimators hold true when large samples are considered, the opposite is true for small samples. In fact, MOM estimation is much less biased than ML because the parameters can be estimated separately, in such a way that a "contamination effect" present in the small sample ML estimation is avoided when using MOM estimation. The strength of ML over MOM in large samples actually makes its weakness in small samples. | |||
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