Building on three widely accepted premises (productivity gains from the division of labor, efficiency gains derived from the proximity of suppliers and users of certain inputs, the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market) this paper shows that a small, open economy may be caught in an underdevelopment trap in which a shallow division of labor (i.e., a low variety of specialized...

We consider why the gender division of labor is so often enforced by custom and why customary gender divisions of labor generally involve both direction and prohibition. In our formal model, agents first learn skills and then enter the marriage market. We show that wasteful behavior may emerge due to strategic incentives in specialization choice and human capital acquisition and that both probl...

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We use digital evolution to study the division of labor among heterogeneous organisms under multiple levels of selection. Although division of labor is practiced by many social organisms, the labor roles are typically associated with different individual fitness effects. This fitness variation raises the question of why an individual organism would select a less desirable role. For this study, ...

Using longitudinal survey data collected in Kenya, this paper estimates the longer-term impacts of antiretroviral therapy (ART) on the labor supply of treated adults and their household members. Building upon previous work in Kenya, data collected from 2004-2006 indicate that early evidence on the short-run impacts of ART tends to be upheld over the long-term as well. The results show that the ...

Honey bees display a fascinating division of labor among foragers. While some bees solely collect pollen, others only collect nectar. It is assumed that individual differences in sensory response thresholds are at the basis of division of labor. Biogenic amines and their receptors are important candidates for regulating division of labor, because they can modulate sensory response thresholds. W...

As is well known (and seen in a previous post), compilers optimize unsigned division by constants into multiplication by a "magic number." But not all constants are created equal, and approximately 30% of divisors require magic numbers that are one bit too large, which necessitates special handling (read: are slower). Of these 30%, slightly less than half (46%) are even, which can be handled at...

Household Choices of Child Labor and Schooling: A Simple Model with Application to Brazil This paper develops and estimates a simple structural model of household decisions regarding child labor and schooling. We argue that part of the conflicting results from the previous literature – related to the effect of improvements in economic conditions on child labor – derives from the different incom...

I document differences in labor supply between a set of Latin American countries and the U.S. in the period 1990-2005. These differences are mostly explained by large differences in female labor supply. In the U.S. the female labor force participation was 69% by 1990, while in Brazil and Mexico was 39% and 37%, respectively. Females began to participate more in the labor market of these countri...