European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics

Title: For Better or for Babies: Fertility Constraints and Marriage in China

Abstract: Can fertility policies have unintended effects on who gets married? We investigate the effect of the 2015 relaxation of China's one-child policy on marriage outcomes. Before universal permission for two children, certain groups were already allowed to have two children. At the same time, China's sex ratio is highly skewed towards more marriageable men than women. Being allowed to have a second child could be a valuable characteristic in the marriage market, increasing men's chances of marriage. Previously advantaged men might then lose out from the relaxation of the one-child policy as they lose their marriage market advantage. Using detailed policy data on exemptions from the one-child limit and individual data from 2010–2018, we find that after the relaxation men who were previously allowed to have a second child are less likely to get married. There is no effect on women. The effect is concentrated within counties with high fertility rates and provinces with a high sex imbalance. The results suggest that differential fertility constraints distorted who got married by giving those allowed to have a second child an advantage. We also find that provinces where more people were exempted see an increase in positive assortative marriages after the relaxation, suggesting distortions also on who married whom.

Title: The American Origin of the French Revolution 

Abstract: We show that the French combatants’ exposure to the United States increased support for the French Revolution a decade later. French regions from which more American combatants originated had more revolts against feudal institutions, revolutionary societies, volunteers for the revolutionary army, and emigrants from the Old Regime’s elite. To establish causality, we exploit two historical coincidences: i) originally, a French army of seven and a half thousand was ready to sail, but one-third did not; ii) among those deployed, only some regiments were stationed in New England.Only combatants exposed to New England affected the French Revolution after their return.