Question 1

Women's Liberation and the Demographic Transition, conditionally accepted, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics (with David Weiss and Hosny Zoabi)

Accepted Answer

U.S. states gave legal and economic rights to married women between 1850 and 1920. Prior to this "women’s liberation," married women were subject to the laws of coverture, which granted virtually unlimited power to their husbands. Using data from the full count U.S. census and contiguous county-border pairs bordering states that gave rights at different times, we use an event-study analysis to show that rights causally reduced fertility. Thus, women’s rights can help explain the demographic transition, itself one of the most profound societal changes experienced by industrializing countries. Interestingly, women’s rights were not granted retroactively, allowing us to compare people married before and after the reforms. This alternative empirical strategy confirms our findings and illuminates mechanisms. Shifting bargaining power from husband to wife with women’s rights accounts for our results, with the underlying spousal disagreement relating to maternal mortality risk. Women’s empowerment can account for about 20% of the decline in fertility during the demographic transition, and may have relevant implications for policy in today’s developing countries. 
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Summary in VoxEU
Interview with Tim Phillips on Vox Talks (Listen directly on Spotify)

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Question 2

Politics and Gender in the Executive Suite. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Vol. 41(3), pp. 893-929, November 2025 (with Alma Cohen and David Weiss)

Accepted Answer

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in gender diversity in corporate America. Simultaneously, CEOs' political preferences have been shown to affect a wide range of corporate decisions.  Evidence suggests that an individual's views on gender equality are more associated with their political preferences than with that individual's own gender.  Accordingly, we ask whether the political preferences of CEOs are associated with the representation and compensation of women in the executive suite. We find that Democratic CEOs (those who contribute more to Democratic candidates) are associated with higher representation of women in the executive suite. To explore causality, we use an event-study approach and find that replacing a Republican with a Democratic CEO is associated with a 20%-50% increase in the fraction of women in the executive suite. Finally, we find that Democratic CEOs are associated with a significant reduction (or even disappearance) of the gender gap in the level and performance-sensitivity of executive pay.

Summary in VoxEU

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Question 3

Highly Educated Women Are No Longer Childless: The Role of Marketization, Economics Letters, Vol. 230, pp. 111226, 2023. (with David Weiss and Hosny Zoabi)

Accepted Answer

Baudin et al, (2015) document that childlessness rates in the U.S. in 1990 exhibited a U-shaped relationship with women's education, with highly educated women much more likely to be childless than other women. We show that this is no longer true:  the childlessness rate of highly educated women has converged to that of other women. We argue that highly educated women are now able to marketize the time cost of child rearing, allowing them to have both a family and a career.

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Question 4

Women's Liberation as a Financial Innovation, Journal of Finance, Vol. 74, pp. 2915-2956, December 2019. (with David Weiss and Hosny Zoabi).

Accepted Answer

In one of the greatest extensions of property rights in human history, common law countries began giving rights to married women in the 1850s. Before this "women's liberation," the doctrine of coverture strongly incentivized women to hold real estate, rather than financial assets such as money, stocks, or bonds. We exploit the staggered nature of coverture's demise across US states to show that women's rights led to shifts in household portfolios; a positive shock to the supply of credit; and a reallocation of labor towards non-agriculture and capital intensive industries. Expansion of investor protection deepened financial markets and aided industrialization.

Summary in VoxEU​
Marginal Revolution

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Question 5

The Politics of CEOs, Journal of Legal Analysis, Vol. 11, pp. 1-45, 2019. (with Alma Cohen, Roberto Tallarita, and David Weiss).

Accepted Answer

This paper studies the political preferences of CEOs of public companies. We use Federal Election Commission records to compile a comprehensive database of the political contributions made by more than 3,800 individuals who served as CEOs of S&P 1500 companies between 2000 and 2017. We find a substantial preference for Republican candidates. We identify how this pattern is related to the company’s industry, region, and CEO gender. In addition, we show that companies led by Republican CEOs tend to be less transparent to investors with respect to their political spending. Finally, we discuss the policy implications of our analysis.

Coverage:
​The New York Times​ (Translated into Hebrew for TheMarker), CNN, WSJ, AXIOS, Marginal Revolution, Quartz
Summary in VoxEU

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Question 6

Why did Rich Families Increase their Fertility? Inequality and Marketization of Child Care. Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 23(4), pp 427-463, December 2018. (with Michael Bar, Oksana Leukhina, David Weiss, and Hosny Zoabi).

Accepted Answer

A negative relationship between income and fertility has persisted for so long that its existence is often taken for granted. One economic theory builds on this relationship and argues that rising inequality leads to greater differential fertility  between rich and poor. We show that the relationship between income and fertility has flattened between 1980 and 2010 in the US, a time of increasing inequality, as high income families increased their fertility. These facts challenge the standard theory. We propose that marketization of parental time costs can explain the changing relationship between income and fertility. We show this result both theoretically and quantitatively, after disciplining the model on US data. We explore implications of changing differential fertility for aggregate human capital. Additionally, policies, such as the minimum wage, that affect the cost of marketization, have a negative effect on the fertility and labor supply of high income women. We end by discussing the insights of this theory to the economics of marital sorting.
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Media coverage:
The Economist
Quartz (part 1)
Quartz (part 2)
Careers and Families of High-Skilled Women in the Age of Inequality
Career Women and the Family - a New Perspective on the Role of Minimum Wage

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Question 7

Changing the Cost of Children and Fertility: Evidence from the Israeli Kibbutz, The Economic Journal, Vol. 126(597), pp. 2038-2063, November 2016 (with Avraham Ebenstein and Avi Simhon).

Accepted Answer

Prior to 1996, Israelis in collective communities (kibbutzim) shared the costs of raising children equally. This paper examines the impact of privatizing costs of children on the behavior of young couples using universal microdata on kibbutz members. Exploiting variation in the increase in cost sharing across kibbutzim, we estimate that lifetime fertility declined by 0.59 children in the cohorts of affected parents. We also examine the exit decisions of members, and find that couples were most likely to leave the kibbutz if they were either higher income or lower fertility. This pattern is also observed among Israeli emigrants, in which higher educated and lower fertility couples are more likely to leave Israel.
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Summary in VoxEU

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Question 8

Do Highly Educated Women Choose Smaller Families? The Economic Journal, Vol. 125(587), pp. 1191-1226, September 2015 Lead Article (with Hosny Zoabi).

Accepted Answer

We present evidence that the cross-sectional relationship between fertility and women's education in the U.S. has recently become U-shaped. The number of hours women work has concurrently increased with their education. In our model, raising children and home-making require parents' time, which could be substituted by services such as childcare and housekeeping. By substituting their own time for market services to raise children and run their households, highly educated women are able to have more children and work longer hours. We find that the change in the relative cost of childcare accounts for the emergence of this new pattern.
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Coverage:
An Interview on BBC World Business Report, October 27, 2014
National Journal
The Observer
The Telegraph
Mail Online
Walla! (In Hebrew)
Big Think
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Syed Al-Helal Uddin's blog   
Summary in VoxEU

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Question 9

The Baby Boom and World War II: A Macroeconomic Analysis, The Review of Economic Studies, Vol 82(3), pp. 1031-1073, July 2015 (with Matthias Doepke and Yishay D. Maoz).

Accepted Answer

We argue that one major cause of the U.S. postwar baby boom was the rise in female labor supply during World War II. We develop a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility and female labor-force participation decisions. We use the model to assess the impact of the war on female labor supply and fertility in the decades following the war. For the war generation of women, the high demand for female labor brought about by mobilization leads to an increase in labor supply that persists after the war. As a result, younger women who turn adult in the 1950s face increased labor-market competition, which impels them to exit the labor market and start having children earlier. The effect is amplified by the rise in taxes necessary to pay down wartime government debt. In our calibrated model, the war generates a substantial baby boom followed by a baby bust.
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Coverage:
The Economist
Discussion in Joachim Voth's Blog "VothSpeak"
A summary of the paper on the LSE USAPP blog:  How Rosie the Riveter led to the 1950s' Baby Boom.
A non-technical summary with a discussion of policy implications (September 2008)​ Europe's fertility crisis: Lessons from the post-war baby boom (published in Vox).

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Question 10

Sons or Daughters? Sex Preferences and the Reversal of the Gender Educational Gap. Journal of Demographic Economics,  Vol 81(2), pp. 179-201, June 2015 (with Hosny Zoabi).

Accepted Answer

This paper provides a new explanation for the narrowing and reversal of the gender education gap. It highlights the indirect effect of returns to human capital on parents' preferences for sons and the resulting demand for children and education. We assume that parents maximize the full income of their children and that males have an additional income, independently of their level of education. This additional income has two effects. First, it biases parental preferences towards sons. Second, it implies that females have relative advantage in producing income through education. We show that when the relative returns to human capital are sufficiently low, the bias in parents' preferences towards sons is relatively high, so that parents who have daughters first have more children. Daughters are born to larger families and hence receive less education. As returns to human capital increase, gender differences in producing income diminish, parents' bias towards sons declines, variation in family size falls and the positive correlation between family size and the number of daughters is weakened. When returns to human capital are sufficiently high, the relative advantage of females in education dominates differences in family size, triggering  the reversal in gender education gap.

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Question 11

Life Expectancy and Schooling: New Insights from Cross-Country Data, Journal of Population Economics, Vol. 25, pp. 1237-1248, October 2012.

Accepted Answer

I argue that the relationship between life expectancy and schooling crucially depends on which measure of life-expectancy one uses. In particular, I show that while the change in life expectancy at birth between 1960 and 1990 is positively correlated with percentage change in schooling, the change in life expectancy at age 5 is, at best, uncorrelated with percentage change in schooling. This evidence suggests that increasing life horizon beyond the early crucial childhood years for formal acquisition of human capital is not as quantitatively important as previously thought.

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Question 12

Women's Lifetime Labor Supply and Labor Market Experience, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Vol. 34, pp. 2126-2140, October 2010 (with Yishay D. Maoz).

Accepted Answer

The pattern of joining the labor force only at an advanced stage of the life-cycle was widespread among American women in the 1960s and 1970s, but not since the 1980s. To explain this change we conduct a theoretical analysis of the interrelation between women's lifetime labor supply choices and the dynamic macroeconomic environment. In our model women choose the late-entry pattern only at early stages of the growth process when wages are sufficiently low and grow sufficiently rapidly. As the economy grows, this lifetime labor profile vanishes and women either join the labor force either early in life or not at all.

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Question 13

Longevity and Lifetime Labor Supply: Evidence and Implications, Econometrica, Vol 77, pp. 1829-1863, November 2009.

Accepted Answer

Conventional wisdom suggests that increased life expectancy had a key role in causing a rise in investment in human capital. I incorporate the retirement decision into a version of Ben-Porath's (1967) model and find that a necessary condition for that causal relationship to hold is that increased life expectancy will also increase the lifetime labor supply. I then show that this condition does not hold neither for American men born between 1840 and 1970 nor for the American population born between 1890 and 1970. The data suggest similar patterns in Western Europe. I end by discussing the implications of my findings for the debate on the fundamental causes of long-run growth.
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Longevity and investment in human capital: Lessons from today's developed countries (published in Vox).

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Question 14

Does Longevity Cause Growth? A Theoretical Critique, Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 11, pp. 363–376, December 2006 (with Hosny Zoabi).

Accepted Answer

This paper challenges conventional wisdom by arguing that greater longevity may have contributed less than previously thought for the significant accumulation of human capital during the transition from stagnation to growth. This is because when parents make choices over the quantity and quality of their offspring, greater longevity positively affects not only the returns to quality but also the returns to quantity. The theory suggests that in contrast to longevity, improvements in health are more likely to generate quantity-quality tradeoff and hence the paper shows the importance of controlling for fertility when empirically examining the impact of children's health on their education.

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Question 15

Child Labor, Fertility and Economic Growth, The ​Economic Journal, Vol. 112, pp. 810-828, October 2002 (with Binyamin Berdugo).

Accepted Answer

This paper explores the evolution of child labor, fertility, and human capital in the process of development. In early stages of development the economy is in a development trap where child labor is abundant, fertility is high and out­put per capita is low. Technological progress, however, increases gradually the wage differential between parental and child labor, thereby inducing parents to substitute child education for child labor and reduce fertility. The economy takes-off to a sustained growth steady-state equilibrium where child labor is abolished and fertility is low. Prohibition of child labor expedites the transition process and generates Pareto dominating outcome.

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Question 16

Women's Labor Force Participation and the Dynamics of Tradition, Economics Letters, Vol. 75(2), pp. 193-198, April 2002 (with Yishay D. Maoz).

Accepted Answer

We present a model in which the social norms regarding labor force participation (LFP) of married women’s differ from the norms concerning men’s. Assuming that these norms depend on past rates of women LFP creates a gradual increase in women LFP.

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Work in Progress

Working Papers

She who Pays the Piper Calls the Number: Reparations and Gender Differences in Fertility Choice, CEPR DP 20629 (with Shay Tsur)

Publish Where It Counts: Publication Choices and Review-Panellist Networks, CEPR DP 21620

Journal Articles

Women's Liberation and the Demographic Transition, conditionally accepted, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics (with David Weiss and Hosny Zoabi)

Politics and Gender in the Executive Suite. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Vol. 41(3), pp. 893-929, November 2025 (with Alma Cohen and David Weiss)

Highly Educated Women Are No Longer Childless: The Role of Marketization, Economics Letters, Vol. 230, pp. 111226, 2023. (with David Weiss and Hosny Zoabi)

Women's Liberation as a Financial Innovation, Journal of Finance, Vol. 74, pp. 2915-2956, December 2019. (with David Weiss and Hosny Zoabi).

The Politics of CEOs, Journal of Legal Analysis, Vol. 11, pp. 1-45, 2019. (with Alma Cohen, Roberto Tallarita, and David Weiss).

Why did Rich Families Increase their Fertility? Inequality and Marketization of Child Care. Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 23(4), pp 427-463, December 2018. (with Michael Bar, Oksana Leukhina, David Weiss, and Hosny Zoabi).

Changing the Cost of Children and Fertility: Evidence from the Israeli Kibbutz, The Economic Journal, Vol. 126(597), pp. 2038-2063, November 2016 (with Avraham Ebenstein and Avi Simhon).

Do Highly Educated Women Choose Smaller Families? The Economic Journal, Vol. 125(587), pp. 1191-1226, September 2015 Lead Article (with Hosny Zoabi).

The Baby Boom and World War II: A Macroeconomic Analysis, The Review of Economic Studies, Vol 82(3), pp. 1031-1073, July 2015 (with Matthias Doepke and Yishay D. Maoz).

Sons or Daughters? Sex Preferences and the Reversal of the Gender Educational Gap. Journal of Demographic Economics, Vol 81(2), pp. 179-201, June 2015 (with Hosny Zoabi).

Life Expectancy and Schooling: New Insights from Cross-Country Data, Journal of Population Economics, Vol. 25, pp. 1237-1248, October 2012.

Women's Lifetime Labor Supply and Labor Market Experience, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Vol. 34, pp. 2126-2140, October 2010 (with Yishay D. Maoz).

Longevity and Lifetime Labor Supply: Evidence and Implications, Econometrica, Vol 77, pp. 1829-1863, November 2009.

Does Longevity Cause Growth? A Theoretical Critique, Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 11, pp. 363–376, December 2006 (with Hosny Zoabi).

Child Labor, Fertility and Economic Growth, The Economic Journal, Vol. 112, pp. 810-828, October 2002 (with Binyamin Berdugo).

Women's Labor Force Participation and the Dynamics of Tradition, Economics Letters, Vol. 75(2), pp. 193-198, April 2002 (with Yishay D. Maoz).

Book Chapters

Why is Labor Productivity in Israel so Low? Forthcoming in The Israeli Economy in the Last Twenty Years: Lights and Shadows in a Market Economy, Cambridge University Press (with Shay Tsur). Also, CEPR DP 14011

Book Reviews

Robert A. McGuire and Phillip RP Coelho: Parasites, pathogens, and progress: diseases and economic development, Journal of Bioeconomics, Vol.15(2), pp 199-201, July 2013.

Work in Progress

Working Papers

She who Pays the Piper Calls the Number: Reparations and Gender Differences in Fertility Choice, CEPR DP 20629 (with Shay Tsur)

Publish Where It Counts: Publication Choices and Review-Panellist Networks, CEPR DP 21620

Journal Articles

Women's Liberation and the Demographic Transition, conditionally accepted, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics (with David Weiss and Hosny Zoabi)

Politics and Gender in the Executive Suite. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Vol. 41(3), pp. 893-929, November 2025 (with Alma Cohen and David Weiss)

Highly Educated Women Are No Longer Childless: The Role of Marketization, Economics Letters, Vol. 230, pp. 111226, 2023. (with David Weiss and Hosny Zoabi)

Women's Liberation as a Financial Innovation, Journal of Finance, Vol. 74, pp. 2915-2956, December 2019. (with David Weiss and Hosny Zoabi).

The Politics of CEOs, Journal of Legal Analysis, Vol. 11, pp. 1-45, 2019. (with Alma Cohen, Roberto Tallarita, and David Weiss).

Why did Rich Families Increase their Fertility? Inequality and Marketization of Child Care. Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 23(4), pp 427-463, December 2018. (with Michael Bar, Oksana Leukhina, David Weiss, and Hosny Zoabi).

Changing the Cost of Children and Fertility: Evidence from the Israeli Kibbutz, The Economic Journal, Vol. 126(597), pp. 2038-2063, November 2016 (with Avraham Ebenstein and Avi Simhon).

Do Highly Educated Women Choose Smaller Families? The Economic Journal, Vol. 125(587), pp. 1191-1226, September 2015 Lead Article (with Hosny Zoabi).

The Baby Boom and World War II: A Macroeconomic Analysis, The Review of Economic Studies, Vol 82(3), pp. 1031-1073, July 2015 (with Matthias Doepke and Yishay D. Maoz).

Sons or Daughters? Sex Preferences and the Reversal of the Gender Educational Gap. Journal of Demographic Economics, Vol 81(2), pp. 179-201, June 2015 (with Hosny Zoabi).

Life Expectancy and Schooling: New Insights from Cross-Country Data, Journal of Population Economics, Vol. 25, pp. 1237-1248, October 2012.

Women's Lifetime Labor Supply and Labor Market Experience, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Vol. 34, pp. 2126-2140, October 2010 (with Yishay D. Maoz).

Longevity and Lifetime Labor Supply: Evidence and Implications, Econometrica, Vol 77, pp. 1829-1863, November 2009.

Does Longevity Cause Growth? A Theoretical Critique, Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 11, pp. 363–376, December 2006 (with Hosny Zoabi).

Child Labor, Fertility and Economic Growth, The ​Economic Journal, Vol. 112, pp. 810-828, October 2002 (with Binyamin Berdugo).

Women's Labor Force Participation and the Dynamics of Tradition, Economics Letters, Vol. 75(2), pp. 193-198, April 2002 (with Yishay D. Maoz).

Book Chapters

​Why is Labor Productivity in Israel so Low? Forthcoming in The Israeli Economy in the Last Twenty Years: Lights and Shadows in a Market Economy, Cambridge University Press (with Shay Tsur). Also, CEPR DP 14011

Book Reviews

Robert A. McGuire and Phillip RP Coelho: Parasites, pathogens, and progress: diseases and economic development, Journal of Bioeconomics, Vol.15(2), pp 199-201, July 2013.

Child Labor, Fertility and Economic Growth, The Economic Journal, Vol. 112, pp. 810-828, October 2002 (with Binyamin Berdugo).

Why is Labor Productivity in Israel so Low? Forthcoming in The Israeli Economy in the Last Twenty Years: Lights and Shadows in a Market Economy, Cambridge University Press (with Shay Tsur). Also, CEPR DP 14011