Rajeev Dehejia
Biographic Data
| ID | 93565 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rajeev Dehejia |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rajeev |
| FAMILY NAME | Dehejia |
| SIGNATURE | DEHEJIA R |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0927-429X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 102 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
From Local to Global: External Validity in a Fertility Natural Experiment
We study issues related to external validity for treatment effects using over 100 replications of the Angrist and Evans natural experiment on the effects of sibling sex composition on fertility and labor supply. The replications are based on census data from around the world going back to 1960. We decompose sources of error in predicting treatment effects in external contexts in terms of macro and micro sources of variation. In our empirical sett…
The Effect of Fertility on Mothers’ Labor Supply over the Last Two Centuries
Using a compiled data set of 441 censuses and surveys from between 1787 and 2015, representing 103 countries and 51.4 million mothers, we find that: (i) the effect of fertility on labour supply is typically indistinguishable from zero at low levels of development and large and negative at higher levels of development, (ii) the negative gradient is stable across historical and contemporary data, and (iii) the results are robust to identification s…
Access to Household Resources and Human Development: Evidence from Survey Data for Tanzania
We use five rounds of two large-scale surveys conducted in Tanzania to explore the two-way relationship between household resources and human development. Several indicators for household resources have been used in the exercise. We find systematic evidence of a relationship in both directions, with household resources enhancing human development and human development feeding into increased resources. While the overall results do indicate a posit…
The Link between Manufacturing Growth and Accelerated Services Growth in India
The impact of trade liberalization on manufacturing growth has been widely studied in the literature. What has gone unappreciated is that accelerated manufacturing growth has also been accompanied by accelerated services growth. Using firm-level data from India, we find a positive spillover from manufacturing growth to gross value added, wages, employment, and worker productivity in services, especially in large urban firms and in service sectors…
The Impact of Income and Non-Income Shocks on Child Labor: Evidence from a Panel Survey of Tanzania
Financial Incentives and Fertility
Using panel data on over 300,000 Israeli women from 1999 to 2005, we exploit variation in Israel's child subsidy to identify the impact of changes in the price of a marginal child on fertility. We find a positive, statistically significant, and economically meaningful price effect on overall fertility and, consistent with Becker (1960) and Becker and Tomes (1976), a small effect of income on fertility, which is negative at low and positive at hig…
Do interest rates matter? Credit demand in the Dhaka slums
Optimal Minimum Wage in the Classic Labor Supply-and-Demand Paradigm
This article demonstrates that minimum wage laws need not induce unemployment even under the classic labor supply-and-demand paradigm. As a result, minimum wage laws can be welfare-enhancing under the basic labor supply and demand model, suggesting the presence of an optimal minimum wage. We discuss conditions under which the optimal minimum wage level is the subsistence wage level. As a consequence, minimum wages should vary across states or cou…
Practical propensity score matching: A reply to Smith and Todd
Insuring Consumption and Happiness Through Religious Organizations
This paper examines whether involvement with religious organizations insures an individual's stream of consumption and of happiness. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), we examine whether households who contribute to a religious organization are able to insure their consumption stream against income shocks and find strong insurance effects for whites. Using the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), we examine wheth…
Child labor and agricultural shocks
Child Labor: The Role of Financial Development and Income Variability across Countries
In this article, we examine the link between child labor and financial development using cross‐country data. We show that child labor and financial development display a significant negative relationship, which is particularly strong in the sample of low‐income countries and is robust for a wide range of specifications and estimators, including fixed‐effects and instrumental variables. We identify a plausible channel through which financial devel…
Booms, Busts, and Babies' Health
We study the relationship between the unemployment rate at the time of a baby's conception and parental characteristics, parental behaviors, and babies' health. Babies conceived in times of high unemployment have a reduced incidence of low and very low birth weight, fewer congenital malformations, and lower postneonatal mortality. These health improvements are attributable both to selection (changes in the type of mothers who conceive during rece…
Was There a Riverside Miracle? A Hierarchical Framework for Evaluating Programs With Grouped Data
This article discusses the evaluation of programs implemented at multiple sites. Two frequently used methods are pooling the data or using fixed effects (an extreme version of which estimates separate models for each site). The former approach ignores site effects. The latter incorporates site effects but lacks a framework for predicting the impact of subsequent implementations of the program (e.g., would a new implementation resemble Riverside?)…
Propensity Score-Matching Methods for Nonexperimental Causal Studies
This paper considers causal inference and sample selection bias in nonexperimental settings in which (i) few units in the nonexperimental comparison group are comparable to the treatment units, and (ii) selecting a subset of comparison units similar to the treatment units is difficult because units must be compared across a high-dimensional set of pre-treatment characteristics. We discuss the use of propensity score-matching methods, and implemen…
Causal Effects in Nonexperimental Studies: Reevaluating the Evaluation of Training Programs
This article uses propensity score methods to estimate the treatment impact of the National Supported Work (NSW) Demonstration, a labor training program, on postintervention earnings. We use data from Lalonde's evaluation of nonexperimental methods that combine the treated units from a randomized evaluation of the NSW with nonexperimental comparison units drawn from survey datasets. We apply propensity score methods to this composite dataset and …
Religion and Economic Activity in India: An Historical Perspective
It is suggested that there has been and continues to be, a deep interrelationship between religious thought and economic activity in India. This claim is evaluated, first in the context of ancient India (the Mauryan empire), where self-reliance was stressed, both economically and religiously, In the context of medieval India, the ossification of the once flexible caste system had profound economic implications. Based on this historical perspectiv…
Child labor and agricultural shocks
The Impact of Income and Non-Income Shocks on Child Labor: Evidence from a Panel Survey of Tanzania
Do interest rates matter? Credit demand in the Dhaka slums
Child Labor: The Role of Financial Development and Income Variability across Countries
In this article, we examine the link between child labor and financial development using cross‐country data. We show that child labor and financial development display a significant negative relationship, which is particularly strong in the sample of low‐income countries and is robust for a wide range of specifications and estimators, including fixed‐effects and instrumental variables. We identify a plausible channel through which financial devel…
The Effect of Fertility on Mothers’ Labor Supply over the Last Two Centuries
Using a compiled data set of 441 censuses and surveys from between 1787 and 2015, representing 103 countries and 51.4 million mothers, we find that: (i) the effect of fertility on labour supply is typically indistinguishable from zero at low levels of development and large and negative at higher levels of development, (ii) the negative gradient is stable across historical and contemporary data, and (iii) the results are robust to identification s…
Religion and Economic Activity in India: An Historical Perspective
It is suggested that there has been and continues to be, a deep interrelationship between religious thought and economic activity in India. This claim is evaluated, first in the context of ancient India (the Mauryan empire), where self-reliance was stressed, both economically and religiously, In the context of medieval India, the ossification of the once flexible caste system had profound economic implications. Based on this historical perspectiv…
Religion and Economic Activity in India: An Historical Perspective
It is suggested that there has been and continues to be, a deep interrelationship between religious thought and economic activity in India. This claim is evaluated, first in the context of ancient India (the Mauryan empire), where self-reliance was stressed, both economically and religiously, In the context of medieval India, the ossification of the once flexible caste system had profound economic implications. Based on this historical perspectiv…
Causal Effects in Nonexperimental Studies: Reevaluating the Evaluation of Training Programs
This article uses propensity score methods to estimate the treatment impact of the National Supported Work (NSW) Demonstration, a labor training program, on postintervention earnings. We use data from Lalonde's evaluation of nonexperimental methods that combine the treated units from a randomized evaluation of the NSW with nonexperimental comparison units drawn from survey datasets. We apply propensity score methods to this composite dataset and …
Propensity Score-Matching Methods for Nonexperimental Causal Studies
This paper considers causal inference and sample selection bias in nonexperimental settings in which (i) few units in the nonexperimental comparison group are comparable to the treatment units, and (ii) selecting a subset of comparison units similar to the treatment units is difficult because units must be compared across a high-dimensional set of pre-treatment characteristics. We discuss the use of propensity score-matching methods, and implemen…
Was There a Riverside Miracle? A Hierarchical Framework for Evaluating Programs With Grouped Data
This article discusses the evaluation of programs implemented at multiple sites. Two frequently used methods are pooling the data or using fixed effects (an extreme version of which estimates separate models for each site). The former approach ignores site effects. The latter incorporates site effects but lacks a framework for predicting the impact of subsequent implementations of the program (e.g., would a new implementation resemble Riverside?)…
Booms, Busts, and Babies' Health
We study the relationship between the unemployment rate at the time of a baby's conception and parental characteristics, parental behaviors, and babies' health. Babies conceived in times of high unemployment have a reduced incidence of low and very low birth weight, fewer congenital malformations, and lower postneonatal mortality. These health improvements are attributable both to selection (changes in the type of mothers who conceive during rece…
Practical propensity score matching: A reply to Smith and Todd
Insuring Consumption and Happiness Through Religious Organizations
This paper examines whether involvement with religious organizations insures an individual's stream of consumption and of happiness. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), we examine whether households who contribute to a religious organization are able to insure their consumption stream against income shocks and find strong insurance effects for whites. Using the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), we examine wheth…
Child labor and agricultural shocks
Child Labor: The Role of Financial Development and Income Variability across Countries
In this article, we examine the link between child labor and financial development using cross‐country data. We show that child labor and financial development display a significant negative relationship, which is particularly strong in the sample of low‐income countries and is robust for a wide range of specifications and estimators, including fixed‐effects and instrumental variables. We identify a plausible channel through which financial devel…
Optimal Minimum Wage in the Classic Labor Supply-and-Demand Paradigm
This article demonstrates that minimum wage laws need not induce unemployment even under the classic labor supply-and-demand paradigm. As a result, minimum wage laws can be welfare-enhancing under the basic labor supply and demand model, suggesting the presence of an optimal minimum wage. We discuss conditions under which the optimal minimum wage level is the subsistence wage level. As a consequence, minimum wages should vary across states or cou…
Do interest rates matter? Credit demand in the Dhaka slums
Financial Incentives and Fertility
Using panel data on over 300,000 Israeli women from 1999 to 2005, we exploit variation in Israel's child subsidy to identify the impact of changes in the price of a marginal child on fertility. We find a positive, statistically significant, and economically meaningful price effect on overall fertility and, consistent with Becker (1960) and Becker and Tomes (1976), a small effect of income on fertility, which is negative at low and positive at hig…
The Impact of Income and Non-Income Shocks on Child Labor: Evidence from a Panel Survey of Tanzania
The Link between Manufacturing Growth and Accelerated Services Growth in India
The impact of trade liberalization on manufacturing growth has been widely studied in the literature. What has gone unappreciated is that accelerated manufacturing growth has also been accompanied by accelerated services growth. Using firm-level data from India, we find a positive spillover from manufacturing growth to gross value added, wages, employment, and worker productivity in services, especially in large urban firms and in service sectors…
Access to Household Resources and Human Development: Evidence from Survey Data for Tanzania
We use five rounds of two large-scale surveys conducted in Tanzania to explore the two-way relationship between household resources and human development. Several indicators for household resources have been used in the exercise. We find systematic evidence of a relationship in both directions, with household resources enhancing human development and human development feeding into increased resources. While the overall results do indicate a posit…
From Local to Global: External Validity in a Fertility Natural Experiment
We study issues related to external validity for treatment effects using over 100 replications of the Angrist and Evans natural experiment on the effects of sibling sex composition on fertility and labor supply. The replications are based on census data from around the world going back to 1960. We decompose sources of error in predicting treatment effects in external contexts in terms of macro and micro sources of variation. In our empirical sett…
The Effect of Fertility on Mothers’ Labor Supply over the Last Two Centuries
Using a compiled data set of 441 censuses and surveys from between 1787 and 2015, representing 103 countries and 51.4 million mothers, we find that: (i) the effect of fertility on labour supply is typically indistinguishable from zero at low levels of development and large and negative at higher levels of development, (ii) the negative gradient is stable across historical and contemporary data, and (iii) the results are robust to identification s…
Economics (13 works) · Demographic economics (7 works) · Econometrics (7 works) · Labour economics (6 works) · Advanced Causal Inference Techniques (5 works) · Business (5 works) · Economic growth (5 works) · Mathematics (5 works) · Population (5 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (5 works)