Paid Maternity Leave and the Role of Disability Insurance Abstract:
How would a national paid leave policy affect the labor-market activity of American women? I explore this question by examining the nation's first paid-leave entitlement for mothers. The passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 effectively created paid maternity leave for women with employer-sponsored short-term disability insurance. This policy was particularly relevant for women in five states with long-standing programs that made short-term disability insurance virtually universal. I present evidence that the law led to an increase in leave-taking, especially among less-educated working women. Cross-sectional evidence suggests that for working women, access to government-mandated disability insurance benefits results in about 2 fewer weeks spent at work in the 5 months around childbirth, a 19% decrease relative to the comparison group. Employment among new mothers in states with disability insurance programs falls by about 6 percentage points in the months immediately after childbirth, but appears to recover completely by month 6.

Federal Transfers and Government Accountability in Indonesia Abstract:
Subnational governments in developing countries rely heavily on transfers from the central government to finance public spending, yet little is known about the relative merits of different transfer arrangements. This paper examines the effects of two large federal grant programs in Indonesia. The first grant is allocated based on fiscal need, with fairly stable and predictable disbursements over time. The second grant is tied to local oil and gas production and is quite volatile. We exploit a policy reform and variation in resource endowments to estimate local government responses to the two grants. Research on other developing countries finds disappointing effects of federal grants, which researchers often attribute to corruption and low political accountability. We use the staggered introduction of direct democracy to Indonesian districts to examine the role of political accountability.