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This paper investigates the effect of using mobile money technology on children’s school participation in low-income societies. We argue that, by reducing transaction costs, and by making it easier and less expensive to receive remittances, mobile money technology reduces the need for coping strategies that are detrimental to child development, such as withdrawing children from school and sending them to work. We test this hypothesis using a set of comparative samples from seven low-income countries. We find that mobile money technology increases the chances of children attending school. This finding is robust to the use of estimation techniques that deal with possible endogeneity issues. We also show that the effect of mobile money is mainly driven by African countries and that, at least for girls, it is significantly higher when the household is living below the poverty line.

In this paper, we explore the impact of social policies and labour market characteristics on women's decisions regarding work and childbearing, using data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). We estimate the two decisions jointly and, in addition to personal characteristics, we include variables related to the childcare system, parental leave arrangements, family allowances, and part time opportunities. Our empirical results indicate that a non-negligible portion of the differences in labour market participation decisions of women from different European countries can be attributed to characteristics of their social policies, while the impact of environmental variables on fertility decisions is only marginally significant. Environmental effects vary by educational level in a significant way. Part-time opportunities (when well-paid and protected), childcare, optional parental leave, and child allowances have more of an impact on the participation decisions of women at lower educational levels.

The study of network representations of physical, biological, and social phenomena has developed rapidly in recent years. This paper presents a review of important results and methods of the science of networks with an application to the field of socio-economic systems. The basic definitions and computational techniques are described and the effects of a networks topology on its dynamic properties are examined and illustrated using a tourism destination as a case study (Elba, Italy). A static structural characterization of the network formed by destination stakeholders is followed by a dynamic analysis of the information diffusion process. The outcomes and the implications of this analysis for improving destination management are discussed.

The history of prices has played a key role in the economic history of the preindustrial world. In this field, Allen’s paper (2001) set a milestone by proposing the calculation of a welfare ratio that would allow a comparison among different areas of the world and different times. Nevertheless, we consider that this method as is has reached its limits and needs major improvements. We therefore propose a change of scope that would allow the establishment of the real consumption-possibility frontier of families—the actual unit of production and consumption in Early Modern times. We also revise the barebone baskets that have been used until now, replacing them with consumer baskets that approach, to a greater degree, the true consumption patterns of different kinds of families. By focusing on two widely documented cases—Madrid and Mexico City—we conclude, first, that consumers had regular access to a wider array of products than previously assumed; second, that in the 18th century prices evolved in Madrid in a relatively similar way to the large cities of Western Europe, even if Madrid constituted an exception in the Castilian context, where inflation was more intense during the second half of the aforementioned century; and, third, that volatility in the consumer price index was around 10% higher for unskilled workers than for skilled workers. However, the volatility deduced from our price indices is significantly lower than the one calculated using the typical barebone method.

We use the theory of planned behavior to investigate the role of attitudes, norms and perceived behavioural control on short-term and long-term fertility intentions, using data from Norway (N = 1,307). There is some evidence that, net of other background variables, positive scores on these factors makes it easier to establish concrete childbearing plans, especially among parents. Subjective norms are particularly important among both parents and childless adults, while perceptions of behavioural control have no additional effect once the actual life situation is taken into account. Attitudes are not important in decisions about the timing of becoming a parent, probably because the main issue for childless adults is not the timing, but the decision to have a child or not.

This paper integrates efficiency wage setting in the theory of optimal redistributive income taxation. In doing so, we use a model with two skill-types, where efficiency wage setting characterizes the labor market faced by the low-skilled, whereas the high-skilled face a conventional, competitive labor market. There are two types of jobs in this economy; a low-demanding job which can be carried out by everybody, and a high-demanding job which can only be carried out by the high-skilled, meaning that a potential mimicker may either adopt a conventional income-replication strategy or a job-replication strategy. In this framework, we show that the marginal income tax implemented for the high-skilled is negative under plausible assumptions. The marginal income tax facing the low-skilled can be either positive or negative in general, even if employment-related motives for policy intervention typically contribute to an increase in this marginal tax. An increase in the unemployment benefit contributes to relax the binding self-selection constraint (irrespective of the strategy adopted by a potential mimicker), which makes this instrument particularly useful from the perspective of redistribution.

ABSTRACT In this paper we allude to a novel role played by the non-linear income tax system in the presence of adverse selection in the labor market due to asymmetric information between workers and firms. We show that an appropriate choice of the tax schedule enables the government to affect the wage distribution by controlling the transmission of information in the labor market. This represents an additional channel through which the government can foster the pursuit of its redistributive goals.

Surveys differ in the way they measure satisfaction and happiness, so comparative research findings are vulnerable to distortion by survey design differences. We examine this using the British Household Panel Survey, exploiting its changes in question design and parallel use of different interview modes. We find significant biases in econometric results, particularly for gender differences in attitudes to the wage and hours of work. Results suggest that the common empirical finding that women care less than men about their wage and more about their hours may be an artifact of survey design rather than a real behavioural difference.

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the short-term effects on achievement, study behaviours and attitude of an intervention providing extra instruction time to students in lower secondary schools in southern Italy. We use a difference-in-differences strategy and compare two contiguous cohorts of students enrolled in the same class for two consecutive years. We control for sorting of students and teachers across classes using the fact that, due to a recent reform, the group of teachers assigned to each class is stable over time. We find that the programme increased performances in mathematics but found no effect for Italian language test scores; the programme increased positive attitudes towards both subjects. We investigate the heterogeneity of the effects focusing on the gender dimension and  find that boys and girls react differently to the intervention: girls use the extra instruction time as a complement to regular home study, while boys use it as a substitute.