There is a commonplace notion that full moons affect natality and mortality. To test this theory, Joshua S. Gans and Andrew Leigh obtain daily births and deaths data from Australia, covering all 10,592 days from 1 January 1975 to 31 December 2003. They find that full moons are not associated with any significant change in...

How much do non-medical factors affect the timing of conceptions, births and deaths? To test this, Joshua S. Gans and Andrew Leigh estimate the effect of the millennium on conceptions, births and deaths. With a highly flexible empirical specification, they find large and significant increases in conceptions and births, and suggestive evidence of an effect...

In 1979, Australia abolished federal inheritance taxes. Using daily deaths data, Joshua S. Gans and Andrew Leigh show that approximately 50 deaths were shifted from the week before the abolition to the week after (amounting to over half of those who would have been eligible to pay the tax). Their results imply that over the...

It is well understood that government policies can distort behaviour. But what is less often recognized is the anticipated introduction of a policy can introduce its own distortions. We study one such “introduction effect”, using evidence from a unique policy change in Australia. In 2004, the Australian government announced that children born on or after...

Using data on births from Australia, Joshua S. Gans and Andrew Leigh estimate the level of patient bargaining power in negotiations over birth timing. In doing so, they exploit the fact that parents do not like to have children born on the 'inauspicious' dates of February 29 and April 1. The authors show that, in...