Rebeca Echávarri

• PhD of Economics
• Senior Lecturer at Public University of Navarre

The abnormally high sex ratio at birth (SRB) is a demographic outcome that appears in several countries in Asia and Africa and results from sex-based discrimination. Whether or not neonatal discrimination was a widespread response to socioeconomic demands during the demographic transition in Europe remains an open question. To address this concern,...

Discrimination against born and unborn females is a well-documented phenomenon in countries such as India, China, Taiwan or Korea. Empirical studies support both additive and substitutive relationships between prenatal and postnatal discriminatory practices against females. We introduce a theoretical evolutionary model that endogenizes the preferen...

Discrimination of born and unborn females is a well documented phenomenon in countries such as India, China, Taiwan or Korea. Empirical studies provide support for both an additive and a substitutive relationship between prenatal and postnatal discriminatory practices against females. We introduce a theoretical evolutionary model that endogenizes t...

The premature mortality of female children is an alarming demographic outcome in many countries of the world. The most popular explanation for this phenomenon is the prevalence of son preference. However, empirical findings indicate that the assumption of a positive relationship between wanted daughters and female children's survival is not found i...

This article investigates the possible existence of a nonlinear link between female disadvantage in natality and education. To this end, we devise a theoretical model based on the key role of social interaction in explaining people's acquisition of preferences, which justifies the existence of a nonmonotonic relationship between female disadvantage...

The sex ratio at birth (SRB) in Spain jumped abruptly in the late 1970s and temporarily reached values of more than 109 boys per 100 girls in the early 1980s. This article shows that health care system expansion increased the likelihood of male births in Spain between 1975 and 1995. By facilitating the delivery of preterm and dystocic babies and im...

A significant portion of female neonatal, infant and child mortality could be avoided. These girls form part of the phenomenon known as missing women. Previous literature has examined whether families that prevent unwanted (female) pregnancies from reaching term provide greater care to the surviving daughters, but it reports mixed results. An avenu...

The sex ratio at birth (SRB) in Spain jumped abruptly in the late 1970s and temporarily reached values over 109 boys per 100 girls during the early 1980s. This period was characterized by the end of a long dictatorship and the transition to democracy, which allowed the expansion of health services and a shift towards more gender-equal values. This...

Focusing on Spain between 1900 and 1930, a period characterised by significant structural transformations and rapid economic growth, this article shows that the sex ratio at birth (SRB) was abnormally high, at least until the 1920s. Apart from questioning whether female under-registration and different mortality environments alone can explain the r...

A significant portion of the mortality affecting girls could be avoided. They are part of the phenomenon known as missing women. A growing body of literature examines whether the rise of sex-selective abortions leads to a decrease in the number of missing girls, by decreasing postnatal discrimination. The evidence is mixed, and theoretical analysis...

Focusing on the years between 1900 and 1930, a period characterised by significant structural transformations and rapid economic growth, this article shows that Spain exhibited abnormally-high sex ratios at birth (SRB) at least until the 1920s. Apart from ruling out the possibility that female under-registration and different mortality environments...

Most interventions against obesity use information to persuade people to change their behavior, with moderate results. Because eating involves automatic routines, new approaches have emerged appealing to non-reflective cognitive processes. Through a randomized controlled trial, we evaluated the impact of visual stimuli (positive and negative) on ch...

This paper investigates the extent to which a biased transmission of educational endowments affects fertility. To this end, we devise a version of Becker's family decision model that takes preference change into account. Specifically, we model ed- ucation as an instrument that increases the autonomy (to prefer), and autonomy as an instrument of pre...

In this paper, we present an innovative approach for ranking profiles of capability sets on the basis of equity. An interesting way of capturing the notion of equity is to take into account the extent to which each of the different functioning vectors is shared by the population under consideration (of size n). This is done by defining the ‘common...

A substantial body of research presents the absence of control on the family sex-composition as one of the main reasons for raising neglected young girls in context of rooted son preference. Therefore, one expects that egalitarian intra-family distributions of survival resources are more welcomed with the control of family sex-composition. In this...

A deeply-rooted preference for sons may decrease the relative number of female births. Though there are variables that may help to erode the couple's preference for sons, these same variables may also increase the availability of means to ensure male births. This is the case of educational achievements. It is not difficult to assume, for example, t...

In Economic Theory, development is the topic, which delves into human welfare. Its aim is linked to welfare expansion in the context of regions. In this working paper, I am assuming that aims and strategies of development are linked to the evolution of welfare notion. At the same time, this paper supports the perspective that regional development o...

A reasonable social objective of some impartial observer could be providing people the possibility to achieve a better life. Achieving a better life depends, in its turn, on the personal living conditions. Hence, offering the best distribution of conditions from a set of posible distributions could be considered the mainstay of Development Theory....

In the debate to arrive at a measure of well-being, Amartya Sen put forward the space of capabilities as the setting of discussion. It is in this space that informational bases are capabilities; that is, substantive freedoms of individuals to promote values and to live the kind of life dictated by those values. For the implementa-tion of well-being...