How do labor market institutions shape the propagation of inflation shocks? We address this question by studying Brazil’s annually indexed minimum wage in a highinflation context. Conventional wisdom suggests that inflation can “grease” labor market adjustments, but institutional wage-setting may alter this mechanism.

Joint physical custody (co-parenting) is an increasingly popular post-divorce parenting arrangement, and while it benefits children, its economic implications for parents are theoretically ambiguous. I investigate empirically how co-parenting affects parents’ labour market outcomes after divorce, exploiting a custody reform in the Netherlands that encouraged co-parenting and increased its uptake by 7.6 percentage points among parents with young children.

We study how central banks respond to U.S. monetary shocks. Using a newly constructed dataset covering over 9,500 monetary policy meetings across 59 economies (the MPM-dataset), we show that emerging market economy (EME) central banks systematically move in unison with the Fed, whereas advanced economy central banks do not. We present evidence that this heterogeneity arises because, in EMEs, U.S.

I study the effect of female empowerment in media on female labor market outcomes using Latin American telenovelas. Using generative AI, I construct a Female Empowerment Index (FEI) for these TV shows from 1960 to 2024. I show that FEI exposure during the impressionable years increases the likelihood of labor force participation among Latin American women. To identify the causal effect of FEI exposure, I implement an instrumental variables strategy using detailed data on television signal coverage in Mexico.

Regulating the price of existing technologies can spur their adoption yet deter subsequent innovation. In India, price controls on genetically engineered (GE) cotton seeds induced this trade-off. Leveraging the policy’s differential timing across states, we show that mandated price reductions accelerated adoption of GE seeds by farmers. Although seed supply kept pace, innovation subsequently stalled: fewer new varieties were introduced. Using newly assembled data from experimental field trials across India, we show that agronomic yields of new varieties fell in price-controlled states.

In weak-state environments, behavior depends less on formal rules and more on internalized norms, yet how such norms emerge–and whether informal institutions can cultivate them remains unclear. I provide causal evidence that accountable grassroots institutions can form, internalize, and sustain moral norms that shape long-run behavior.

Can investing in failing schools help them improve? This paper studies this question using a natural experiment based on a 2017 lawsuit settlement that allocated substantial resources to the lowest-performing schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Using a difference-in-differences design, I compare 50 secondary schools that received an increase of 13.5% on average in their annual budgets for three years, to nearby public, noncharter schools that received no settlement funding.