Research

Abstract: We study how political empowerment affected women's emancipation as reflected in their life choices. The staggered introduction of female suffrage in Swiss states allows us to exploit the variation in the age at which women were exposed to the right to vote to estimate the differences in life choices between women who were socialized in a world with politically empowered women and those who were socialized before. Our empirical findings document that early exposure to female suffrage increased female labor force participation, weakened marital bonds and motivated human capital investment.

Abstract: We investigate the effect of social capital on health outcomes during the Covid-19 pandemic in independent analyses for Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Exploiting detailed geographical variation within countries, we show that a one-standard-deviation increase in social capital leads to between 14% and 34% fewer Covid-19 cases per capita accumulated from mid-March until end of June 2020, as well as between 6% and 35% fewer excess deaths per capita. Our results highlight the positive health returns of strengthening social capital.

Abstract: In a national ballot in 2009, Swiss citizens surprisingly approved an amendment to the Swiss constitution to ban the further construction of minarets. The ballot outcome manifested reservations and anti-immigrant attitudes in regions of Switzerland which had previously been hidden. We exploit this fact as a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of negative attitudes towards immigrants on foreigners’ location choices and thus indirectly on their utility. Based on a regression discontinuity design with unknown discontinuity points and administrative data on the population of foreigners, we find that the probability of their moving to a municipality which unexpectedly expressed stronger reservations decreases initially by about 40%. The effect is accompanied by a drop of housing prices in these municipalities and levels off over a period of about 5 months. Moreover, foreigners in high-skill occupations react relatively more strongly highlighting a tension when countries try to attract well-educated professionals from abroad.

Are asylum seekers more likely to work with more inclusive labor market access regulations? Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 155: 17, 2019 (with Alois Stutzer and Roman Uhlig)Media coverage: "Grosse Unterschiede zwischen Kantonen: Der Zufall entscheidet über eine zügige Integration". In: Aargauer Zeitung, June 28, 2018. [link]

Abstract: In the face of recent refugee migration, early integration of asylum seekers into the labor market has been proposed as an important mechanism for easing their economic and social lot in the short as well as in the long term. However, little is known about the policies that foster or hamper their participation in the labor market, in particular during the important initial period of their stay in the host country. In order to evaluate whether inclusive labor market policies increase the labor market participation of asylum seekers, we exploit the variation in asylum policies in Swiss cantons to which asylum seekers are as good as randomly allocated. During our study period from 2011 to 2014, the employment rate among asylum seekers varied between 0% and 30.2% across cantons. Our results indicate that labor market access regulations are responsible for a substantial proportion of these differences, in which an inclusive regime increases  participation by 11 percentage points. The marginal effects are larger for asylum seekers who speak a language that is linguistically close to the one in their host canton.

Despite intense policy debates, the relationship between social welfare and refugee crime remains understudied. Taking steps to address this gap, our study focuses on Switzerland, where mobility restrictions on exogenously assigned refugees coincide with cantons’ autonomy in setting social assistance rates. Linking time-varying cantonal benefit rates between 2009 and 2016 to individual-level administrative data, we find that higher social assistance reduces criminal charges,  specially for petty crimes and drug offenses. In light of limited (short-run) repercussions for refugees’ labor market participation, our results suggest social assistance can be a cost-effective measure to improve refugee welfare and enhance public safety.

Abstract: We demonstrate that individuals’ survey responses are prone to the influence of gender norms. Drawing on Swiss and Austrian data combining survey and administrative information for the same couple, we find that couples where the woman outearns her partner misreport their incomes such that they comply with the male breadwinner norm. This introduces a systematic bias into surveyed incomes and leads to a considerable overestimation of policy relevant measures like the gender wage gap, which is frequently based on survey data. Furthermore, surveyed income information can lead to false conclusions about individuals' labor market behavior if taken at face value. 

Abstract: We study the effect of institutional childcare on child penalties. Using Swiss administrative data, we exploit the staggered opening of childcare facilities across municipalities in the canton of Bern. We find that the presence of childcare facilities in the year of birth of the first child reduces the child penalty.  The availability of childcare increases maternal earnings and decreases the compensating increase in fathers' earnings in households with below median earnings, but not in households with above median earnings. Although childcare affects relative earnings contributions within the household, there is no effect on total household earnings. 

Abstract: We study the link between precisely timed campaign finance donations and the exertion of influence on narrow legislative decisions. We propose that the incentives around the pass margin of votes can be exploited to infer whether moneyed interests buy contested votes. Our theoretical reasoning suggests that vote-buying induces a discontinuity both in the vote outcome distribution and in donation flows at the pass margin. The theoretical predictions are tested based on two decades of roll-call voting in the U.S. House. Several pieces of evidence substantiate the main finding, suggesting that moneyed interests exert effective control over the passage of contested bills.

Abstract: Many people are concerned about societal cohesion in the face of higher numbers of foreigners migrating to Western democracies. The challenge for the future is to find and adopt institutions that foster integration. We investigate how the right to vote in local elections affects immigrants’ compliance with the law. In our study for Denmark, we exploit an institutional regulation that grants foreigners local voting rights after three years of stay. Relying on register data, we find causal evidence that the first possibility to vote considerably reduces the number of legal offenses of non-Western male immigrants in the time after elections. 

The “child penalty” significantly reduces women’s lifetime earnings and pension savings, but it remains unclear whether this is the deliberate result of forward-looking choices made by mothers. In this paper, we shed light on the factors that mothers take into account when deciding on their labor supply and document that they are largely inattentive to long-term financial factors. Through a large-scale field experiment that combines rich survey with administrative data, we show that providing mothers with objective, individualized information about the long-run costs of reduced labor supply increases demand for financial information and future labor supply plans, in particular among women who initially underestimate the long-term costs. Leveraging linked employer administrative data one year post-intervention, we observe that this group increases their actual labor supply by 6 percent over the mean. This paper provides novel evidence on the role of cognitive constraints in mothers’ labor supply decisions and highlights their relevance for tackling gender inequality in the labor market.

We document several stylized facts about divorce perceptions and household specialization: First, women are over-optimistic about their own divorce likelihood and over-estimate claims to their partner’s income post-divorce, suggesting that current specialization patterns are not optimal. Second, lower own divorce expectations correlate with lower career aspirations. Third, women who have been exposed to divorce and its financial implications in their close environment are better informed and specialize less in home production. Based on these insights, we develop a testimonial intervention that emulates learning from a divorce experience and measure its impact on household bargaining and career investment.