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In many high-income economies, the recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented declines in women's employment. We examine how the forces that underlie this observation play out in developing countries, with a specific focus on Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa. A force affecting high- and low-income countries alike are increased childcare needs during school closures; in Nigeria, mothers of school-age children experience the largest declines in employment during the pandemic, just as in high-income countries. A key difference is the role of the sectoral distribution of employment: whereas in high-income economies reduced employment in contact-intensive services had a large impact on women, this sector plays a minor role in low-income countries. Another difference is that women's employment rebounded much more quickly in low-income countries. We conjecture that large income losses without offsetting government transfers drive up labor supply in low-income countries during the recovery.

In this survey, we argue that the economic analysis of fertility has entered a new era. First-generation models of fertility choice were designed to account for two empirical regularities that, in the past, held both across countries and across families in a given country: a negative relationship between income and fertility, and another negative relationship between women's labor force participation and fertility. The economics of fertility has entered a new era because these stylized facts no longer universally hold. In high-income countries, the income-fertility relationship has flattened and in some cases reversed, and the cross-country relationship between women's labor force participation and fertility is now positive. We summarize these new facts and describe new models that are designed to address them. The common theme of these new theories is that they view factors that determine the compatibility of women's career and family goals as key drivers of fertility. We highlight four factors that facilitate combining a career with a family: family policy, cooperative fathers, favorable social norms, and flexible labor markets. We also review other recent developments in the literature, and we point out promising new directions for future research on the economics of fertility.

We examine the impact of the global recession triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic on women's versus men's employment. Whereas recent recessions in advanced economies usually had a disproportionate impact on men's employment, giving rise to the moniker "mancessions," we show that the pandemic recession of 2020 was a "shecession" in most countries with larger employment declines among women. We examine the causes behind this pattern using micro data from several national labor force surveys, and show that both the composition of women's employment across industries and occupations as well as increased childcare needs during closures of schools and daycare centers made important contributions. While many countries exhibit similar patterns, we also emphasize how policy choices such as furloughing policies and the extent of school closures shape the pandemic's impact on the labor market. Another notable finding is the central role of telecommuting: gender gaps in the employment impact of the pandemic arise almost entirely among workers who are unable to work from home. Nevertheless, among telecommuters a different kind of gender gap arises: women working from home during the pandemic spent more work time also doing childcare and experienced greater productivity reductions than men. We discuss what our findings imply for gender equality in a post-pandemic labor market that will likely continue to be characterized by pervasive telecommuting.

The COVID19 crisis has hit labor markets. School and child-care closures have put families with children in challenging situations. We look at Germany and quantify the macroeconomic importance of working parents. We document that 26 percent of the German work force have children aged 14 or younger and estimate that 11 percent of workers and 8 percent of all working hours are affected if schools and child-care centers remain closed. In most European countries,the share of affected working hours is even higher. Policies to restart the economy have to accommodate the concerns of these families.

This paper investigates the role of testing and age-composition in the Covid-19 epidemic. We augment a standard SIR epidemiological model with individual choices regarding how much time to spend working and consuming outside the house, both of which increase the risk of transmission. Individuals who have flu symptoms are unsure whether they caught Covid-19 or simply a common cold. Testing reduces the time of uncertainty. Individuals are heterogeneous with respect to age. Younger people are less likely to die, exacerbating their willingness to take risks and to impose externalities on the old. We explore heterogeneous policy responses in terms of testing, confinements, and selective mixing by age group.

Does the presence of borrowers with behavioural biases create a need for regulation to limit the misuse of credit? Proponents of consumer finance regulations often argue that some consumers overborrow because of behavioural biases, which leads them to become heavily indebted. In contrast, opponents maintain that regulations harm borrowers by increasing the cost of borrowing and limiting access to credit. We use a model with both “rational” and “behavioural” consumers to examine what occurs when unsecured consumer credit (e.g., credit cards) is regulated. In the model, behavioural consumers are overly optimistic about their future income. This leads them to make financial mistakes: they borrow too much and default too late. Since these over-optimistic consumers incorrectly believe they are rational, both types of consumers behave identically. Lenders cannot discern between the two, so they use type scores—similar to credit scores—to track the likelihood of a borrower being behavioural or rational. This means that both types of borrowers with the same type score borrow at the same interest rates. Since rational borrowers default less often, they end up subsidizing the borrowing costs for behavioural borrowers. This results in over-optimistic borrowers facing lower interest rates than they normally would if they weren’t grouped with rational borrowers. Our calibrated model allows us to evaluate several regulatory policies: reducing the cost of default, increasing borrowing costs, imposing debt limits and providing financial literacy education. While we find that some policies do lower debt and filings, they do not reduce overborrowing by behavioural consumers. Although financial literacy education eliminates financial mistakes, it also reduces behavioural borrowers' welfare because it removes the cross-subsidization of interest rates. These findings offer a cautionary tale for consumer financial regulations., Est-ce que la présence d’emprunteurs ayant des biais cognitifs nécessite la mise en place d’une réglementation visant à atténuer la mauvaise utilisation du crédit? Ceux qui militent pour la réglementation du crédit à la consommation soutiennent souvent que certains consommateurs empruntent de manière excessive parce qu’ils ont des biais cognitifs qui les poussent à lourdement s’endetter. En revanche, ceux qui s’y opposent affirment qu’une telle réglementation nuit aux emprunteurs en faisant augmenter le coût d’emprunt et en limitant l’accès au crédit. Nous nous servons d’un modèle comprenant deux types de consommateurs – les « rationnels » et ceux ayant des biais cognitifs – afin d’examiner ce qui se produit si l’on réglemente le crédit à la consommation non garanti (les cartes de crédit). Dans le modèle, les consommateurs qui ont des biais sont exagérément optimistes par rapport à leurs revenus futurs, ce qui les amène à commettre des erreurs financières : ils empruntent trop et attendent trop avant de déclarer faillite. Puisque ces personnes trop confiantes se voient, à tort, comme rationnelles, les deux types de consommateurs agissent de la même manière. Les prêteurs étant incapables de distinguer les deux types de consommateurs, ils utilisent un système de pointage – similaire aux cotes de crédit – pour déterminer avec quelle probabilité le comportement d’un emprunteur est biaisé ou rationnel. Cela signifie que les deux types de consommateurs obtiennent le même taux d’intérêt s’ils ont le même score. Étant donné que les emprunteurs rationnels se retrouvent moins souvent en défaut de paiement, ils financent, en fin de compte, les coûts d’emprunt de l’autre groupe d’emprunteurs. Par conséquent, les emprunteurs trop optimistes se voient octroyer des taux d’intérêt plus bas que s’ils étaient placés dans un groupe distinct des emprunteurs rationnels. Notre modèle étalonné nous permet d’évaluer plusieurs politiques réglementaires : réduction du coût associé aux défauts de paiement, accroissement des coûts d’emprunt, imposition de limites d’endettement et éducation financière. Même si nous constatons que certaines politiques aident effectivement à réduire l’endettement et les faillites, elles n’empêchent pas les emprunts excessifs contractés par les consommateurs ayant un biais cognitif. Bien que l’éducation élimine les erreurs financières, elle diminue aussi le bien-être des emprunteurs biaisés en éliminant l’interfinancement du taux des intérêts. Ces résultats invitent donc les autorités de réglementation à la prudence quand elles encadrent le crédit à la consommation.

In recent US recessions, employment losses have been much larger for men than for women. Yet, in the current recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the opposite is true: unemployment is higher among women. In this paper, we analyze the causes and consequences of this phenomenon. We argue that women have experienced sharp employment losses both because their employment is concentrated in heavily affected sectors such as restaurants, and due to increased childcare needs caused by school and daycare closures, preventing many women from working. We analyze the repercussions of this trend using a quantitative macroeconomic model featuring heterogeneity in gender, marital status, childcare needs, and human capital. Our quantitative analysis suggests that a pandemic recession will i) feature a strong transmission from employment to aggregate demand due to diminished within-household insurance; ii) result in a widening of the gender wage gap throughout the recovery; and iii) contribute to a weakening of the gender norms that currently produce a lopsided distribution of the division of labor in home work and childcare.

The Covid-19 crisis has hit labor markets. School and child-care closures have put families with children in challenging situations. We look at Germany and quantify the macroeconomic importance of working parents. We document that 26 percent of the German workforce have children aged 14 or younger and estimate that 11 percent of workers and 8 percent of all working hours are affected if schools and child-care centers remain closed. In most European countries, the share of affected working hours is even higher. Policies to restart the economy have to accommodate the concerns of these families.