Matthias Doepke is an Associate Professor of Economics at Northwestern University, an Affiliate Professor at the University of Munich, an NBER Research Associate, and a CEPR Research Fellow. After undergraduate studies at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin he received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 2000. In 2005, he was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. His research interests include economic growth and development, political economy, macroeconomics, and monetary economics. Recently, Professor Doepke has worked population dynamics and economic growth, the political economy of child labor, endogenous preferences in macroeconomics, and redistributional effects of inflation. He has published articles in numerous academic journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Economic Growth, and Journal of the European Economic Association.

Abstract: Empirical evidence suggests that money in the hands of mothers (as opposed to their husbands) benefits children. Does this observation imply that targeting transfers to women is good economic policy? We develop a series of non-cooperative family bargaining models to understand what kind of frictions can give rise to the observed empirical relationships. We then assess the policy implications of these models. We find that targeting transfers to women can have unintended consequences and may fail to make children better off. Moreover, different forms of empowering women may lead to opposite results. More research is needed to distinguish between alternative theoretical models.