IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eag/rereps/27.html

Measurement Without Theory, Once Again

Author

Abstract

Bailey and Collins (2011) argue that Greenwood, Seshadri, and Vandenbroucke's (2005) hypothesis that the baby boom was partly due to a burst of productivity in the household sector is not supported by evidence. This conclusion is based on regression results showing that appliance ownership is negatively correlated with fertility. They also argue that the Amish, who limit the use of modern technology, had a baby boom. First, it is demonstrated that a negative correlation between appliance ownership and fertility can arise naturally in Greenwood, Seshadri, and Vandenbroucke's model. Second, evidence is presented casting doubt on the presumed technology phobia of the Amish. In Journal of Demographic Economics (2015), v. 81, n. 3: 317-329.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy Greenwood & Ananth Seshadri & Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2015. "Measurement Without Theory, Once Again," Economie d'Avant Garde Research Reports 27, Economie d'Avant Garde.
    • Handle: RePEc:eag:rereps:27
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jeremygreenwood.net/papers/gsv15.pdf
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: None
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Urban J. Jermann & Marianne Baxter, 1999. "Household Production and the Excess Sensitivity of Consumption to Current Income," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 902-920, September.
    2. Smith, A A, Jr, 1993. "Estimating Nonlinear Time-Series Models Using Simulated Vector Autoregressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(S), pages 63-84, Suppl. De.
    3. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2007. "Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time Over Five Decades," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 969-1006.
    4. Larry Jones & Alice Schoonbrodt, 2016. "Baby Busts and Baby Booms: The Fertility Response to Shocks in Dynastic Models," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 157-178, October.
    5. Keane, Michael P & Wolpin, Kenneth I, 1997. "The Career Decisions of Young Men," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(3), pages 473-522, June.
    6. Kurt Mitman & Iourii Manovskii & Fatih Karahan & Marcus Hagedorn, 2013. "Unemployment Benefits and Unemployment in the Great Recession: The Role of Macro Effects," 2013 Meeting Papers 1260, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Jeremy Greenwood & Ananth Seshadri & Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2005. "The Baby Boom and Baby Bust," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 183-207, March.
    8. Matthias Doepke & Moshe Hazan & Yishay D. Maoz, 2015. "The Baby Boom and World War II: A Macroeconomic Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(3), pages 1031-1073.
    9. Chari, V.V. & Kehoe, Patrick J. & McGrattan, Ellen R., 2008. "Are structural VARs with long-run restrictions useful in developing business cycle theory?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(8), pages 1337-1352, November.
    10. Berry, Steven & Levinsohn, James & Pakes, Ariel, 1995. "Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(4), pages 841-890, July.
    11. Martha J. Bailey & William J. Collins, 2011. "Did Improvements in Household Technology Cause the Baby Boom? Evidence from Electrification, Appliance Diffusion, and the Amish," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 189-217, April.
    12. Joshua D. Angrist & Alan B. Keueger, 1991. "Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 979-1014.
    13. Stefania Albanesi & Claudia Olivetti, 2014. "Maternal health and the baby boom," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 5, pages 225-269, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bastien Chabé-Ferret & Paula Eugenia Gobbi, 2018. "Economics Uncertainty and Fertility Cycles: The Case of the Post-WWII Baby Boom," Working Papers ECARES 2018-19, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    2. Nguyen Thang Dao & Julio Dávila & Angela Greulich, 2021. "The education gender gap and the demographic transition in developing countries," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(2), pages 431-474, April.
    3. Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner & Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2017. "Family Economics Writ Large," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1346-1434, December.
    4. Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner & Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2017. "Family Economics Writ Large," Working Papers wp2018_1706, CEMFI.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bellou, Andriana & Cardia, Emanuela, 2014. "Baby-Boom, Baby-Bust and the Great Depression," IZA Discussion Papers 8727, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Abel Brodeur & Lamis Kattan, 2022. "World War II, the Baby Boom, and Employment: County-Level Evidence," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(2), pages 437-471.
    3. Jeremy Greenwood & Ananth Seshadri & Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2011. "Measurement Without Theory: A Response to Bailey and Collins," RCER Working Papers 561, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
    4. Tamura, Robert & Simon, Curtis & Murphy, Kevin M., 2012. "Black and White Fertility, Differential Baby Booms: The Value of Civil Rights," MPRA Paper 40921, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Gobbi, Paula Eugenia & ,, 2018. "Economic Uncertainty and Fertility Cycles: The Case of the Post-WWII Baby Boom," CEPR Discussion Papers 13374, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Vandenbroucke, Guillaume, 2011. "Optimal fertility during World War I," MPRA Paper 35709, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Matthew J. Hill, 2014. "Homes and husbands for all: Marriage, housing and the baby boom," Economics Working Papers 1452, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    8. Esmée Zwiers, 2024. "Estimating the Lifecycle Fertility Consequences of WWII Using Bunching," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 24-027/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    9. Doepke, M. & Tertilt, M., 2016. "Families in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1789-1891, Elsevier.
    10. Stefania Albanesi & Claudia Olivetti, 2014. "Maternal health and the baby boom," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 5, pages 225-269, July.
    11. Christopher Handy & Katharine L. Shester, 2022. "Birth order and the decline in college completion among the baby boom generation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(4), pages 1626-1643, October.
    12. Tamura, Robert & Simon, Curtis, 2017. "Secular Fertility Declines, Baby Booms, And Economic Growth: International Evidence," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(7), pages 1601-1672, October.
    13. repec:hka:wpaper:2013-03 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Jesús J. Sánchez-Barricarte, 2018. "Measuring and explaining the baby boom in the developed world in the mid-twentieth century," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 38(40), pages 1189-1240.
    15. Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner & Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2017. "Family Economics Writ Large," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1346-1434, December.
    16. Nico Voigtl?nder & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2013. "How the West "Invented" Fertility Restriction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2227-2264, October.
    17. Larry Jones & Alice Schoonbrodt, 2016. "Baby Busts and Baby Booms: The Fertility Response to Shocks in Dynastic Models," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 157-178, October.
    18. Daniela Vidart, 2024. "Revisiting the Link Between Electrification and Fertility: Evidence from the Early 20th Century United States," Working papers 2024-03, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised May 2025.
    19. Christian Siegel, 2017. "Female Relative Wages, Household Specialization and Fertility," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 24, pages 152-174, March.
    20. Larry E. Jones & Alice Schoonbroodt & Michèle Tertilt, 2010. "Fertility Theories: Can They Explain the Negative Fertility-Income Relationship?," NBER Chapters, in: Demography and the Economy, pages 43-100, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Bellou, Andriana & Cardia, Emanuela & Lewis, Joshua, 2025. "From Bust to Boom: The Great Depression and Women's Fertility," IZA Discussion Papers 18120, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E13 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Neoclassical
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • N32 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eag:rereps:27. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jeremy Greenwood (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.jeremygreenwood.net/EAG.htm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.