Research
Working Papers
Municipal-level Gender Norms: Measurement and Effects on Women in Politics [PDF]
with Lorenzo de Masi (Carlos III University of Madrid)
Abstract: We study the implications of traditional gender norms for legislators' engagement with women's issues. We leverage rich data from Facebook on the popularity of gender-related interests (processed using machine learning algorithms) to develop a granular Gender Norms Index (GNI) at the municipal level within Italy, a geographical resolution that would otherwise be unavailable. After validating our index, we leverage this local variation in norms to isolate their impact on legislators' policy activity in the Italian Parliament. We show that while female legislators generally sponsor more gender-related bills than their male counterparts, their engagement is substantially smaller if they were born in a gender-conservative town. This result persists even when comparing legislators within the same party, constituency or with similar characteristics. The absence of such a systematic impact on non-gender legislation further reinforces the causal interpretation of our estimates. Supplementary evidence on voting behavior suggests that gender norms also affect the passage of pro-equality legislation. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of social norms and sexist culture in lawmaking, thereby slowing down reform for the expansion of women's rights.
A Welfare Analysis of Universal Childcare: Lessons From a Canadian Reform [WP] [Policy Impacts library]
with Sébastien Montpetit (Toulouse School of Economics) and Pierre-Loup Beauregard (University of British Columbia)
Awarded the Best Paper Prize 2024 (runner-up) of the Canadian Labour Economics Forum
Abstract: We assess the welfare impact of universal childcare provision, leveraging the introduction of public daycare services in Québec in 1997. Unlike the standard sufficient-statistic metric, which assumes a marginal change in fiscal policy, our approach accounts for the non-marginal nature of the program and quantifies non-pecuniary benefits. Through a structural model of maternal labor supply and childcare choices, we estimate substantial welfare gains from universal policies, yielding a Marginal Value of Public Funds (MVPF) above 3.5. Using the sufficient-statistic approach leads to underestimating welfare gains by half. Counterfactual simulations and a difference-in-differences analysis suggest that increasing availability, rather than solely improving affordability, is crucial for the effective design of universal preschool programs.
The Effectiveness of Parental Leaves when Social Norms Matter [PDF]
Awarded the Best paper award (third prize) at the Augustin Cournot Doctoral Days 2021
Abstract: Do gender norms affect the impact of parental leave policies? I show how, in presence of conservative norms, leave policies may fail to foster gender convergence, and possibly be counterproductive for it. I consider a model where mothers' career and couples' childcare decisions are affected by endogenous norms regarding maternal care. Adhering to conservative gender norms, mothers caring for their infants impose a negative externality on other mothers. The introduction of parental leave expands the utility-possibility frontier, and more mothers pursue high-level careers. However, both because of conservative norms and the reduced opportunity cost of care, they take inefficiently long leaves, thus reinforcing conservative gender roles. I show that fathers' quotas that reserve a fraction of the leave for fathers can restore efficiency. Intuitively, when parents share leave, mothers take shorter leaves, thus reducing norm costs suffered by other mothers. Hence, in gender conservative contexts, policies aiming to increase fathers' involvement in care are desirable not only for gender equity, but also on efficiency grounds. In a second step, I test my model's key predictions in the Italian context. I confirm that when they share leave with fathers, mothers take shorter leaves. Furthermore, mothers' education significantly decreases their likelihood of taking long leaves in areas with more neutral norms, but not in more traditional ones, confirming the importance of norms in leave uptake.
Work in Progress
Gender Norms and Parental Leave
with Lorenzo de Masi (Carlos III University of Madrid)
Selected project for VisitINPS Fellowship on gender inequalities
Abstract: This paper examines the role of gender norms in mothers' parental leave decisions combining matched employer-employee data and granular Facebook-based measures of gender norms across Italian municipalities. Surprisingly, mothers from gender-conservative areas take shorter parental leave than those from progressive towns, even when working in the same firm or commuting zone. We show that this effect is driven by positive selection into the labor force among conservative women and differences in informal care availability. Comparing similarly productive mothers, we find that traditional gender norms do not affect leave duration for low-productivity mothers but significantly increase leave for high-productivity mothers from conservative areas. We interpret these findings through a model of mother's career and childcare choices with endogenous norms: when gender norms are salient, high-career mothers take longer leave to reduce guilt from deviating from traditional roles, potentially hindering career progressions and exacerbating child penalties. These results highlight the importance of gender norms in policy evaluation and design.
The Perverse Effects of Rent Control: Evidence From a Large-scale Stringent Regulation in Catalonia
with Michael Abel (ESCP Business School) and Jaime Luque (ESCP Business School)
Abstract: Using a stringent large-scale policy intervention that capped rental prices in more than 60 municipalities in Catalonia, Spain, we find that rent control initially reduces average rents, but this effect vanishes after one year due to a 30%-32% decline in rental housing supply. House sales increase by 13%-18% while house prices decrease by 2.3%-3.7%. The reduction in both rental and house prices stems from effects at the bottom of the respective distributions, with no significant effects on rents at the top. Conversely, expensive houses experience significant price increases. We estimate that working class properties lost 1 billion euros in value as a consequence of rent control, a significant larger amount than the 8 million euros gains from reduced rents for low- and medium-income tenants. Inequality also widened because house values at the top quartile of the distribution increased by almost 1.1 billion euros.
The gendered costs of teamwork: Evidence from scientific retractions
with Piera Bello (University of Bergamo) and Alessandra Casarico (Bocconi University)
Whose (misperceived) norms matter? Shifting norms of paternity leave take-up
with Alessandra Casarico (Bocconi University) and Alessandra González (Duke University)