Essays on Parental Leave, Global Disinflation and Non-Renewable Resources

Abstract

This thesis consists of three independent chapters. In chapter 1 the focus is on the allocation of parental leave between spouses. We modify a model of collective rationality developed by Pierre-André Chiappori and coauthors to explicitly account for parental leave. The model predicts that the ability of spouses to influence the allocation of parental leave depends on personal characteristics such as age and income. Using representative data of households with young children from Germany we show that a high relative age or income allows a spouse to reduce his or her share in childcare. In chapter 2 the influence of increasing international trade on inflation is analyzed. Increasing international trade makes firm competition fiercer and leads to improving productivity through firm selection. All else being equal, this reduces inflation. In chapter 3, geological evidence is linked to the historic developments of non-renewable resource prices and its production in a model of endogenous growth to suggest that a range of non-renewable resources could be considered inexhaustible. If the deterioration of resource deposits in terms of ore grade and investments into extraction technology offset each other, the total resource extraction cost per unit of the resource would stay constant. This could explain the historic pattern of exponentially growing resource consumption at constant prices.