Research
Ongoing projects
Prenatal Sex Detection Technology and Mothers’ Labour Supply in India with Marco Bertoni, Isha Gupta and Guglielmo Weber (NEW VERSION AVAILABLE SOON!)
The advent of prenatal sex diagnostic technology (PSDT) in India in the mid-eighties has made it easier for women to identify the sex of children before their birth, giving them an option to attain their desired sex composition of children without having to undergo repeated pregnancies. In this paper, we investigate the impact of this technology on mothers’ labour supply using a triple-differences estimator. Our strategy combines supply-driven changes in ultrasound availability over time with plausibly exogenous family-level variation in the incentive to sex-select and son preference at the local level. We find that PSDT had a significant negative impact on mothers’ labour supply with the effect driven by wealthy and educated mothers. We further investigate the underlying channel linking prenatal sex selection and mothers’ labour supply and identify that post the increased availability of ultrasound scanners there was a substitution of girls with boys. Further investigation shows no changes in mortality and health outcomes of firstborn girls relative to boys post-PSDT. We propose a model to rationalize our reduced form resutls.
The Welfare Effects of Non-Linear Health Dynamics (with Andrea Moro) (download) submitted
We generate a continuous measure of health to estimate a non-parametric model of health dynamics, showing that adverse health shocks are highly persistent when suffered by people in poor health, a pattern that cannot be accounted for by canonical models. We incorporate this health measure into a life-cycle model of consumption, savings, and labor force participation. After estimating the model parameters, we simulate the effects of health shocks on economic outcomes. We find that bad health shocks have persistent adverse economic effects that are more dramatic for poor individuals starting in bad health. Bad health shocks also increase the dispersion of asset accumulation within this category of individuals. We show that a canonical model of health dynamics would not be able to uncover these effects.
Subjective Survival Beliefs, Cognitive Skills and Investments in Risky Assets (with Francesco Maura, Francesca Parodi and Guglielmo Weber)
Publications (from the most recent)
Disability Insurance and the Effects of Return-to-work Policies. Review of Economic Dynamics, 49, 351-373 (2023).
Does retirement reduce familiarity with Information and Comunication Technology? Joint with Danilo Cavapozzi. Review of Economics of the Household, 20, 553-577 (2022).
The effect of work disability on the job involvement of older workers. Joint with Danilo Cavapozzi. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 192, 724-739 (2021).
How did European retirees respond to the Covid-19 pandemic? Joint with Marco Bertoni, Martina Celidoni and Guglielmo Weber. Economics Letters, 203 (2021).
Education and Persistence of Earnings Shocks. Joint with Francesco Maura. Economics Letters, 196 (2020).
Retirement and Healthy Eating. Joint with Martina Celidoni, Vincenzo Rebba and Guglielmo Weber. Fiscal Studies, 41(1), 199-219 (2020).
Labour supply and Welfare Effects of Disability Insurance: A Survey. Italian Economic Journal, 5(1), 161-189 (2019)
The contribution of paradata and features of respondents, interviewers, and survey agencies to panel co-operation in the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Joint with Johanna Bristle, Martina Celidoni and Guglielmo Weber. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, series A, 182:3-35 (2019) doi:10.1111/rssa.12391
Retirement and cognitive decline. A longitudinal analysis using SHARE data. Joint with Martina Celidoni and Guglielmo Weber. Journal of Health Economics, vol. 56, pp. 113-125 (2017).
Other refereed publications
How do early-life conditions shape health age profiles late in life? Joint with Michele Belloni, Danilo Cavapozzi, Yao Pan and Serena Trucchi. (2019) In In Axel Börsch-Supan, Johanna Bristle, Karen Andersen-Ranberg, Agar Brugiavini, Florence Jusot, Howard Litwin, Guglielmo Weber (Eds.), Health and socio-economic status over the life course: First results from SHARE Waves 6 and 7 (pp. 91–98). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110617245-009
End-of-Working-Life Gender Wage Gap: The Role of Health Shocks, Parental Education and Personality Traits. Joint with Marco Bertoni, Andrea Bonfatti, Martina Celidoni and Angela Crema. (2019) In In Axel Börsch-Supan, Johanna Bristle, Karen Andersen-Ranberg, Agar Brugiavini, Florence Jusot, Howard Litwin, Guglielmo Weber (Eds.), Health and socio-economic status over the life course: First results from SHARE Waves 6 and 7 (pp. 141–148). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110617245-014
Life expectancy and health investments. Joint with Marco Bertoni, Andrea Bonfatti, Martina Celidoni and Angela Crema. (2019) In In Axel Börsch-Supan, Johanna Bristle, Karen Andersen-Ranberg, Agar Brugiavini, Florence Jusot, Howard Litwin, Guglielmo Weber (Eds.), Health and socio-economic status over the life course: First results from SHARE Waves 6 and 7 (pp. 289-296). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110617245-030
Personality traits and financial behaviour. Joint with Marco Bertoni, Andrea Bonfatti, Martina Celidoni and Angela Crema. (2019) In In Axel Börsch-Supan, Johanna Bristle, Karen Andersen-Ranberg, Agar Brugiavini, Florence Jusot, Howard Litwin, Guglielmo Weber (Eds.), Health and socio-economic status over the life course: First results from SHARE Waves 6 and 7 (pp. 49–56). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110617245-004
A Multilevel Heckman model to investigate financial assets among older people in Europe. Joint with Omar Paccagnella. In F. Mola et al. (Eds.), Classification, (Big) Data Analysis and Statistical Learning, Studies in Classification, Data Analysis, and Knowledge Organization, Springer. (2018).
A multilevel latent class analysis of the purchasing channels among European consumers. Joint with Omar Paccagnella and Roberta Varriale. Metron, vol.74(3), pp.293-309 (2016).
I want to break free. The role of working conditions on retirement expectations and decisions. Joint with Elisabetta Trevisan and Guglielmo Weber. European Journal of Ageing, vol.12, pp.17-28 (2015).
Early-life circumstances and cognitive functioning dynamics in later life. Joint with Christelle Garrouste and Omar Paccagnella. In A. Borsch-Supan, M. Brandt, H. Litwin, Weber G. (eds), Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations in Europe: First Results from SHARE after the Economic Crisis, De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 209-223 (2013).
Other working papers (not published works)
Harmonized net income measures in SHARE Wave 1. Joint with Marco Bertoni, Andrea Bonfatti, Guglielmo Weber and Francesca Zantomio. SHARE WP Series n. 25-2016