This dissertation is to study the long-term impacts of the exposure to the Cultural Revolution in urban China. Following the literature on historic legacies, the first chapter provides a micro-analysis of the long-term impacts of a particular historical event: the Cultural Revolution in urban China. I use multiple datasets, construct indexes that measure the intensities of the impacts of the large-scale closure of schools as well as the forced migration, and evaluate the long-term impacts of exposure to the Cultural Revolution in urban China using synthetic cohort approach and multivariate models. Based on the theoretical framework of the life-cycle model, empirical evidence consistently shows that the Cultural Revolution produced a lasting negative effect on permanent income for the subjected birth cohorts (1946-1961) beginning in the 1990s, and this effect was amplified by around 25% to 45% from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s as the Chinese market economy increasingly evolved. Based on the approach of sequential covariate addition, evidence show that the mechanism of the impact includes channels of productivity determinants (e.g., educational attainment, work experience and health conditions), marriage, and attitudes toward the determinants of success. Interestingly, it is found that the Send-Down Movement has played a positive role in the channel of attitude which contributes to individual's annual income. These conclusions are shown to be robust to contemporaneous as well as cross-regional comparisons, and placebo tests with samples of rural-urban migrants and permanent rural residents. Also the results are robust to a variety of controls for family background, exposure to the Great Famine and various model specifications.

The second chapter is to study the spill-over effects of the exposure to the Cultural Revolution onto their next generation. Specifically, it exploits the closure of senior secondary school in China to study the intergenerational transmission of human capital using Difference-in-Difference and Instruments Variables (IV) estimations. The closure of senior secondary schools from 1966 to 1971 in China gave rise to exogenous variations in parental educational attainment both over time and across city and town residential which are not correlated with the hereditory factors and make testing the existence of causality rather than pure selection possible. Using large Census data, the estimation results consistently show that there are statistically significant causal effects from parents to children. The results also imply stronger effects of intergenerational transmission from parents to daughters. These findings are robust to examinations within different treatment and control groups, different identification strategy and different model specification.

This dissertation is comprised of three essays on institutional reforms surrounding marital dissolution, domestic violence and education in Mexico. It is well accepted that a country's economic growth is greatly determined by its ability to innovate and to increase productivity. Understanding the role of family and education policy becomes relevant since there is evidence that domestic violence, divorce and education are linked to labor productivity and other socioeconomic outcomes such as health.

Using a difference-in-differences methodology, the second chapter exploits the variation in law adoption across states to estimate the impact of liberalized divorce laws on divorce rates. The findings do not support the claim that greater access to divorce has led to increasing divorce rates. In addition to the divorce laws examined in the second chapter, the third chapter estimates the impact of legal reforms that make domestic violence a punishable offense and that provide assistance programs to victims of domestic violence. In intra-household bargaining models, these laws potentially redistribute bargaining power to the victims of domestic violence, which they can use to bargain for less violence. I find that improving the bargaining position through prevention programs and counseling decreases homicides, suicides and bodily injury crimes. Policies which may leave the victim without recourse if separated from the spouse seem to be less effective.

The final chapter exploits a quasi-experimental setting to estimate the impact of more instructional days on student performance. The sources of variation arise from state-mandated changes in test-administration and the start of the school calendar year. Using an unbalanced panel of all public elementary schools and controlling for a set of school quality measures, the analysis provides evidence to support increasing the number of schools days. The results also suggest that the effects are non-linear and that in impoverished schools, having more days of instruction may be beneficial to the extent that there are other school resources that assist in the production of learning.

Chapter one examines the long-term impact of the state prohibitions of alcohol in the United States. Between 1851 and 1920, thirty-four states enacted statewide prohibitions of alcohol at different times. Making use of the variation in state prohibition as a natural experiment, the long-term labor market outcomes of cohorts exposed to state prohibition during the critical early development period is examined. Female cohorts exposed to alcohol-reduced environments during the critical interval from the prenatal period and up to three years of age are shown to have increased labor force participation and increased income in 1960. The results are mainly driven by exposure in the prenatal period. No results were found for male cohorts, which might be explained by the selective prenatal mortality of the frailest male cohort members unexposed to state prohibition. Chapter two provides an impact evaluation of the Brazilian National Land Credit Program. Making use of a panel dataset and a pipeline control group, the chapter evaluates the impact of the program on the outcome variables of agricultural production and earned income, using both difference in differences and individual fixed effects models. Because beneficiaries acquired land at different times, the heterogeneous effect of additional years of land ownership is investigated. The findings suggest that the program is successful in increasing beneficiaries' agricultural production and earned income, but only after four years of land ownership. Once the repayment of the loan is taken into consideration, however, the benefits of the program largely go to making debt payments and improving the net worth of the beneficiaries rather than to raising current household expenditures. Chapter three evaluates the impact of the Brazilian National Land Credit Program on the heights of beneficiary children. Making use of a family fixed effects model, the program is shown to significantly increase the height for age z-scores of beneficiary children exposed to parents' land ownership in the second, third or fourth year of life. The increases in height for age z-scores are likely attained through the mechanism of increased nutritional security with the acquisition of land through the program.