"Mothers at Work: How Mandating a Short Maternity Leave Affects Work and Fertility", with Esther Mirjam Girsberger, Kalaivani Karunanethy & Rafael Lalive. Published in Labour Economics, 2023.
Coverage: The Economist
"Higher Education Financing and the Educational Aspirations of Teenagers and their Parents", with Dan Anderberg, Arnaud Chevalier, Melanie Luhrmann & Ronni Pavan. Published in Economics of Education Review (2021).
"Unilateral Divorce for Women and Labour Supply in the Middle East and North Africa: The Effect of Khul Reform", with Anna Sjogren. Published in Feminist Economics (2014)
"Female Employment, Marriage, and Childcare" (Reject and Resubmit, Economic Journal) Current Version.
Previously Female Employment and Childcare
Childcare and women’s employment decisions are intimately linked. I develop a dynamic model designed to analyse how childcare subsidies affect household labour supply, marriage, fertility, and childcare decisions in a collective setting. In the model, marriage allows for specialisation in household production, which becomes more important when children are present. However, this specialisation can reduce work experience for one spouse and lead to long-term income loss upon divorce, as couples cannot commit to insure one another against the lower wages associated with household specialisation. I estimate the model using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics in the United States to evaluate the impact of childcare subsidy programs on various life-cycle outcomes of women and men. Offering a 10 percent childcare subsidy increases the labour supply of single mothers by 3.2 percent, while married mothers, and higher-educated single mothers, respond much less. Finally, I show that childcare subsidies encourage women to have children earlier, which increases the gains from marriage through specialisation and leads to an increase in the married fraction of the sample.
"A study on the employment and wage outcomes of persons living with a same-sex partner". ILO working paper 131. With Sevane Ananian and Nick Drydakis.
This study examines the labour market disparities faced by same-sex couples across nine countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Mexico, Thailand, the United States of America and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela), extending the focus of previous studies by looking beyond developed countries. Consistent with the existing literature, the findings presented here show that, in many countries, men in same-sex couples participate in the labour market to a lesser extent, experience higher unemployment rates and receive lower wages than comparable men in opposite‑sex couples. Conversely, women in same-sex couples are more likely to be employed than comparable heterosexual women and to enjoy a wage premium in some countries. Finally, it makes the case for further research, especially in developing countries.
Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities, Routledge (2017), edited by Ebru Kongar, Jennifer C. Olmsted, Elora Shehabuddin