We investigate the role of gender norms in shaping parental childcare following changes in the relative take-home pay of mothers and fathers. Exploiting variation from Swedish tax reforms, we estimate the elasticity of substitution in parental childcare for native and immigrant couples from a variety of countries characterized by varying gender norms. Couples originating from countries with relatively conservative norms are more likely to reallocate childcare to mothers following a reduction in the father’s tax rate and less likely to reallocate childcare to fathers following a reduction in the mother’s tax rate, thereby reinforcing a traditional allocation of childcare across parents.

A single worker allocates her time among different projects which are progressively assigned. When the worker works on too many projects at the same time, the output rate decreases and completion time increases according to a law which we derive. We call this phenomenon “task juggling” and argue that it is pervasive in the workplace. We show that task juggling is a strategic substitute of worker effort. We then present a model where task juggling is the result of lobbying by clients, or coworkers, each seeking to get the worker to apply effort to his project ahead of the others’.

We exploit rules of class formation to identify the causal effect of increasing the number of immigrants in a classroom on natives’ test scores, keeping class size and quality of the two types of students constant (pure ethnic composition [PEC] effect). We explain why this is a relevant policy parameter although it has been neglected so far. The PEC effect is sizable and negative (16% of a standard deviation) on language and math scores. For first-generation immigrants, it is more negative (30% of a standard deviation). Estimates that cannot control for endogenous adjustments implemented by principals are instead considerably smaller.

Published online January 27, 2025

University tuition typically remains constant throughout the years of enrollment while delayed degree completion is increasingly a problem for academic institutions around the world. Theory suggests that if continuation tuition were raised, the probability of late graduation would be reduced. Using a regression discontinuity design on data from Bocconi University in Italy, we show that a 1,000 euro increase in continuation tuition reduces the probability of late graduation by 5.2% when the benchmark probability is 80%. This decline is not associated with an increase in the dropout rate or a fall in the quality of students performance.

Exploiting admission thresholds to the Bologna day care system, we show using a regression discontinuity (RD) design that one additional day care month at age 0–2 reduces intelligence quotient by 0.5% (4.7% of a standard deviation) at age 8–14 in a relatively affluent population. The magnitude of this negative effect increases with family income. Similar negative impacts are found for personality traits. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis from psychology that children in day care experience fewer one-to-one interactions with adults, with negative effects in families where such interactions are of higher quality. We embed this hypothesis in a model that lends structure to our RD design.