This paper examines the impacts of China’s family planning policies in the 1970s (“Later, Longer, Fewer” campaign) on the long-term career advancement of men and women. Despite the high female labor participation rates, I use a cohort Triple-Difference approach and find a significant gender gap in achieving managerial positions among those affected by the policies, with average exposure reducing these disparities by 20%. The narrowing of the gender gap is more pronounced for women in non-white-collar or non-female-dominated industries, where fewer institutional advantages leave women more vulnerable to fertility-related career disruptions. Women more exposed to family planning policies tend to seek college education, increase labor input, and rely less on offspring for old-age support, with no analogous findings in males, suggesting that human capital accumulation is a key mechanism for the narrowing of the gender gap in career outcomes. This paper underscores the capacity of policy interventions to influence labor market dynamics and foster gender equality.

We examine whether the highly orchestrated setting of evening art auctions increases prices relative to day sales. Using three datasets—including repeat-sales data for Impressionist and Contemporary art, and a restricted sample of homogeneous works by Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst—we estimate the “evening effect” via propensity score matching. Across specifications, evening sales command premia of 40–60% in prices and pre-sale estimates. Controlling for estimates and other observables, we find a residual evening premium of 5–15%. We interpret these results as consistent with a contextual or design-driven “halo effect.” We also show that evening placement in the first sale of a pair is negatively related to subsequent returns. Finally, we conclude that placing high-valued paintings in evening sales that take place before the day sales is optimal for revenue. These findings highlight the role of market design in shaping auction outcomes.

We study whether association with a defeated side in civil conflict can persist across cohorts and shape bureaucratic careers. The Jingnan Campaign (1399--1402) offers a useful contrast between political rupture and institutional continuity: the civil war over imperial succession in Ming China brought a new emperor to power while leaving the examination-based bureaucracy intact. We identify counties associated with the defeated side from records of officials who died for the deposed emperor and link these counties to examination and career records for later jinshi, holders of the highest civil-service examination degree, which provided a principal route into elite official service. Comparing cohorts from these and other counties before and after 1402, we find no broad decline in successful examination entry. Instead, larger differences emerge after examination success: later jinshi from these counties are less likely to receive initial capital appointments and attain lower subsequent ranks. Rank losses are larger where the most senior recorded loyalist had held higher office and remain concentrated at the county level. These patterns suggest that political conflict can leave durable, place-based differences in bureaucratic opportunity despite continuity in formal recruitment.

Public health restrictions can generate substantial health benefits but may also impose social costs within households. I study the effects of China’s stringent lockdowns in early 2020 on marital stability and relationship quality. Using a Difference-in-Differences design, I find that divorce-related searches increased by about 18.5% during lockdowns. Longer lockdown exposure is also associated with lower marital satisfaction, with larger declines among women with multiple children, particularly younger women. The negative association is most pronounced for marital satisfaction, with no comparable declines in broader measures of life, work, or economic satisfaction. These findings show that the social costs of large-scale mobility restrictions extend to marital relationships and may not be fully reflected in official divorce statistics.