Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Special Issue on Discrimination and Diversity.
This paper investigates the long-term effects of the Paraguayan War (1864–1870) on intimate partner violence (IPV). The identification relies on a novel historical dataset which uses the distance from municipalities to military camps during the war together with military camp sizes to proxy the impact of the war across eastern Paraguay. The likelihood of IPV occurring today is 5.54 percent higher than average in municipalities which were more heavily affected by the war. Consistent with relative improvements in female labour participation and human capital posing a threat to the male breadwinner role within the household, I present evidence that reducing the gender differences in the labour market and in human capital accumulation after the war increases the long term likelihood of IPV. As non-gender-based types of interpersonal violence are, in the long-run, unaffected, I conclude that gender norms caused by the war enabled IPV. I argue that female empowerment is a multifaceted phenomenon where some dimensions, in this case IPV, have greater influence than others.
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
This paper estimates the impact of particulate matter pollutants, measured by PM10 levels, on public healthcare costs for youth and older adult populations. To do this, we use administrative data from a large UK hospital and exploit spatial and temporal variation in PM10 levels. We find that patient enrolment increases when their neighbourhood experiences higher levels of PM10. Specifically, a standard deviation increase in PM10 levels increases the enrolment of patients age 60 years and older by 6.2%, and the enrolment of patients under 18 years of age by 3.1%. Using detailed costing information, we calculate that a standard deviation increase in PM10 increases public healthcare costs by £873, 985.20 per year.
Submitted.
This note examines whether for-profit management affects educational outcomes in Chile’s universal voucher system. Using administrative panel data for all primary voucher schools from 2010–2014, we compare for-profit and nonprofit schools along inputs and student performance. For-profit schools serve more disadvantaged students and use lower-cost inputs, such as less-qualified teachers, but provide more instruction hours and smaller classes. Once observable characteristics are controlled for, we find no significant differences in standardized test scores between for-profit and nonprofit schools. These results suggest that in this context, allowing for-profit management neither improves nor harms measured educational outcomes.
Submitted.
The demographic consequences of the Paraguayan War (1864–1870) remain among the most contested in Latin American history. While Reber (1988) argues that Paraguay lost only 8.7–18.5% of its pre-war population, Whigham & Potthast (1999) estimate losses as high as 60–69%. This article revisits these divergent claims by introducing newly digitized archival records documenting draft-eligible males in late 1867 and early 1868, providing a near-contemporaneous snapshot of the male population amid wartime mobilization. Using demographic projection methods anchored in pre-war census data and plausible growth rates, I analyze the alignment of these draft records
with alternative mortality estimates. The findings suggest that the records are more consistent with high-loss scenarios, implying that previous low estimates may substantially understate male casualties. By combining historical demography with newly recovered data, this study contributes to broader debates on the short and long-term consequences of wartime population shocks.
We provide causal evidence on the marginal propensity to repay debt (MPRD) of older adults. Our aim is to disentangle arguments from the literature explaining the slow draw down of wealth by older adults (that richer individuals are incentivised to increase wealth, and thus have a higher MPRD), from evidence of the MPRD of the general population (which finds that poorer individuals have a higher MPRD). We exploit a payment made by the Government of Canada to the universe of 73 and 74-year-olds, where the decision rule determining payment was the exact date of birth. Using RDD techniques and data from the universe of Canadian credit bureau files, we find that
MPRD for older adults varies across wealth and credit status.