Alessandra Voena

Yours, Mine and Ours: Do Divorce Laws affect the Intertemporal Behavior of Married Couples??

This paper examines how divorce laws affect couples’ intertemporal choices and wellbeing. Exploiting panel variation in U.S. laws, I estimate the parameters of a model of household decision making. Household survey data indicate that the introduction of unilateral divorce in states that imposed an equal division of property is associated with higher household savings and lower female employment, implying a distortion in household assets accumulation and a transfer towards wives whose share in household resources is smaller than the one of their husband. When spouses share consumption equally, separate property or prenuptial agreements can reduce distortions and increase equity. ∗Department of Economics, The University of Chicago. Email: avoena@uchicago.edu. I thank my adviser Luigi Pistaferri and Michèle Tertilt as well as Caroline Hoxby, Petra Moser and Monika Piazzesi for their outstanding guidance as part of my dissertation committee at Stanford University. I am also grateful to Ran Abramitzky, Stefania Albanesi, Rick Banks, Maristella Botticini, Giacomo De Giorgi, Paula England, Max Floetotto, Seema Jayachandran, Hamish Low, Aprajit Mahajan, Neale Mahoney, Ellen McGrattan, Costas Meghir, Andrea Pozzi, Victor Rios-Rull, Martin Schneider, Brett Turner as well as participants in seminars and conferences. I owe special thanks to Elizabeth Powers and Jeffrey Gray, who provided critical data. I acknowledge the financial support of the Leonard W. Ely & Shirley R. Ely Graduate Student Fellowship through a grant to SIEPR and the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Studies Graduate Dissertation Fellowship.

Compulsory Licensing: Evidence from the Trading with the Enemy Act

Compulsory licensing allows firms in developing countries to produce foreign-owned inventions without the consent of foreign patent owners. This paper uses an exogenous event of compulsory licensing after World War I under the Trading with the Enemy Act to examine the long run effects of compulsory licensing on domestic invention. Difference-in-differences analyses of nearly 200,000 chemical inventions suggest that compulsory licensing increased domestic invention by at least 20 percent.

Inheritance Customs and Agricultural Investment

This paper examines the connection between widows’ land inheritance rights and land investments in Zambia. We study whether the threat of land expropriation upon widowhood deters households from fallowing, applying fertilizer, and employing labor-intensive tillage techniques. Variation in widow inheritance is based on customary village practices, which we observe in surveys of village leaders. Controlling for possible confounding factors, both OLS and IV estimates show lower levels of land investment by married couples in villages where widows do not inherit. Concern over prospective loss of land by the wives reduces investment in land quality even while the husband is alive.