I analyze the interplay between culture and economic incentives in decision-making. To this end, I study birth timing decisions of second generation migrant women to France and the US. Only the probability to have three or more children increases with the home country fertility norm, whereas the timing of the first two births is either unaffected or negatively correlated. I propose a model that rationalizes these findings in which decisions are the result of a trade-off between an economic cost-benefit analysis and a cultural norm. The model predicts that decisions with a higher cost of deviation from the economic optimum should be less prone to cultural influence. This is consistent with substantial evidence showing that the timing of the first birth bears much larger costs for mothers in terms of labor market outcomes than that of subsequent births.

We revisit the question of why fertility behaviors and educational decisions appear to vary systematically across ethnic groups. We assess the possibility that differences in fertility across groups remain even though their socioeconomic characteristics are similar. More specifically, we consider that parents' fertility decisions are affected by the uncertainty concerning the future economic status of their offspring. We assume that this uncertainty varies across groups and is linked to the size of the group one belongs to. We find support for the minority status hypothesis according to which members of large minorities usually have a higher fertility than the majority facing low potential for social mobility while small minorities have lower fertility.

Using a unique French dataset, we analyze the relationship between remigration intentions and several immigrants' behaviors in the host and origin countries addressing the potential endogeneity of remigration intentions. We also investigate the potential trade-off and complementarities between various immigrants' investment behaviors. We find that temporary migrants are more likely to invest in the country of origin but less likely to invest in the host country. Moreover, our results suggest a trade-off between immigrants' investment in the home and in the host country.

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