Research

How early-life income shapes women’s life trajectories is central to understanding social mobility and gender inequality. This paper shows that income support during childhood delays motherhood and shifts women toward more career-oriented transitions to adulthood, ultimately leading to higher cumulative labor market earnings. I combine fifteen years of administrative records with a regression discontinuity design that exploits an arbitrary eligibility rule for a large-scale, government-implemented cash transfer program. An additional USD 1,000 of income support during childhood increases women’s total months of formal employment and cumulative earnings by 6.5%, with outcomes observed on average at age 28. These gains operate through changes in transitions to adulthood: an additional 1,000 USD of income support increases the probability of a career-oriented transition by 14.0% relative to a motherhood-oriented path. Earnings gains accumulate up to the birth of the first child but once fertility timing is accounted for, i.e., conditional on age of first birth, eligible and ineligible women experience similar child penalties. Additional evidence on mechanisms suggests that the channels through which income support operates depend on age at exposure and the institutional and socio-economic context. A Marginal Value of Public Funds analysis shows that, through increased future payroll tax revenues, the program fully pays for itself by age 40, and over the life cycle generates government revenues of approximately USD 2.39 per dollar transferred. Overall, these results show that income support during childhood can reshape women’s fertility timing and early career trajectories, thereby promoting social mobility and reducing gender inequality.

In this paper, we analyze how top income earners (TIEs) respond to changes in personal income taxation. Using an unprecedented combination of administrative records from the Tax and Social Security Agencies that covers most sources of personal income, we exploit a unique reform to Uruguay’s progressive labor income tax schedule that generated quasi-random variation in the marginal tax rates affecting labor income earners in the top 1% of the distribution. Using a difference-in-differences design, we estimate the elasticities on the intensive, extensive, and income shifting margins to changes in the labor income tax rates. Our preferred specification estimates an intensive margin elasticity of 0.577, which is partially explained by a real labor supply adjustment through fewer hours worked. Responses on the extensive margin are larger. Our preferred estimates indicate an extensive margin semi-elasticity of 2.479, which is mostly driven by shifts from the labor to the corporate income tax base (with a semi-elasticity of -1.967). Based on a simple model that allows individuals to choose between different tax bases, we estimate that the efficiency costs of the reform are, at most, 31.3% of the projected tax revenue.

In signaling models, individuals invest effort to obtain credentials that employers interpret as productivity signals and reward with higher wages. But what if students are uninformed about the earnings premium associated with such credentials? Correcting these misperceptions could affect behavior, either by increasing motivation or by  changing how individuals display their credentials. We test this in a field experiment in France, leveraging a fixed GPA cutoff for academic honors. At midsemester, we randomly provide students with information about the actual earnings premium for honors. We document large initial misperceptions: nearly 70% believe honors carry zero wage premium. The information treatment increases the likelihood of displaying honors on CVs or LinkedIn by about 8%, but has no effect on intended study hours. Effects on academic achievement are heterogeneous: treatment increases honors attainment only for students near the threshold at midsemester, with no impact for those farther away. These effects are driven by high-ability students, consistent with separating equilibria where only low-cost types respond to threshold incentives, the mechanism that makes credentials informative..

Job displacement generates large and persistent income losses. This project studies how different public policy designs mitigate the consequences of job loss in Uruguay, a middle income country with a relatively well developed social safety net. Using matched employer-employee records, we combine difference in differences and regression discontinuity designs to estimate both the effects of job displacement and the insurance value of two policies: (i) a traditional contributory unemployment insurance program (UI) and (ii) a non-contributory conditional cash transfer program that is widely available to households in the lower half of the income distribution (AFAM PE). 

Conditional cash transfer programs are a widely used policy tool in developing countries, designed to reduce poverty in the short run while promoting human capital accumulation and breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty in the long run. These programs typically condition benefits on children’s school attendance and health check ups, yet in settings with limited state capacity, enforcing such conditions is non trivial. This project studies the medium and long term consequences of enforcing conditionalities through benefit suspensions, using rich administrative data from Uruguay. We examine how suspensions affect children’s immediate school enrollment and short run educational attainment, as well as broader household responses, including parental labor supply and total household income. The project also aims to identify potential spillover effects on non suspended households and assess whether exposure to benefit suspensions during childhood has lasting impacts on outcomes in young adulthood, informing the optimal design and political economy of conditional transfer policies.