Research

Main areas of interest:

Policy evaluation

Health Economics, Environmental Economics, Economics of Education

Review of Economic Studies // Journal of Public Economics // Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization // German Economic Review // Labour Economics // Papers in Regional Science // IZA Journal of Labor Economics // LABOUR //  Social Science and Medicine // The Journal of Economic Inequality // Local Government Studies // Statistical Journal of the IAOS

(pre-PhD work)

Sibling Effects in Cognitive Achievement - Are Smart Brothers and Sisters Good for You?  (SSRN Working Paper: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2908145)

In this paper I investigate whether children's cognitive achievement is influenced by the cognitive achievement of their siblings. I apply system GMM to estimate a dynamic model of cognitive skill production. I allow for endogeneity of sibling performance and of other regressors, for reciprocal influence between younger and older sibling, for unobserved individual and family effects, and for state dependence of cognitive achievement. I find evidence for positive and significant sibling effects on both verbal reasoning and mathematics test scores, with results consistent across the two skills. My results support theories of cumulative achievement processes, as current achievements are shown to depend on past ones. Influence goes from older siblings to younger ones and viceversa, in contradiction with the assumption of unidirectional effect from old to young, which underlies identification in related studies.