Work in progress

Technology Biased Educational Change: Broadband Internet and Educational Choices (Job Market Paper)
Status: writing
Does the diffusion of a general purpose technology such as broadband internet affect educational choices and attainment? I estimate the causal impact of improved digital access on students' educational outcomes. I exploit the staggered roll-out of broadband across Norwegian municipalities between 2000 and 2010, using rich population-wide administrative data. I find that broadband expansion increases upper secondary completion, university applications, and bachelor's and master's degree attainment. It also affects educational choices, shifting field-of-study preferences towards mainly STEM, Economics & Business and Art & Social Sciences and Law. To a smaller extent Media and Languages are affected, whereas Health is not impacted and fields like Tourism and Sport experience a decrease in demand. The effects emerge gradually over time, consistent with broadband acting as a general-purpose infrastructure that reshapes information and expectations about the possible future labor market outcomes. While gains are larger for students from less educated families, they are smaller for women, indicating that digital technology can both reduce income inequality and reinforce gender differences. 

When Organized Crime Moves In: Economic and Human Capital Disruption  with Erika Povea
Status: writing
This paper studies how organized crime presence transforms local communities and human capital formation. Identifying these effects is challenging, as crime is endogenous to local conditions. We address this by leveraging the recent case of Ecuador, where criminal organizations from neighboring countries have rapidly established a new cocaine export route. This externally driven shock generated sharp increases in violent crime, allowing us to estimate causal effects using a difference-in-differences design based on proximity to areas prone to cocaine smuggling. Crime-affected areas experienced higher dropout rates among children at grades characterized by weak school attachment, the end of primary education and the first years of secondary school. While we do not find evidence of increased dropout among older students aged 15-18, individuals in this age group already out of education at the time of the crime surge exhibited a marked rise in risky behaviors, reflected in higher homicide victimization and earlier pregnancies. We also document severe economic disruption: household income fell by nearly 30%, driven mainly by a decline in informal employment. Declining earnings are a key mechanism linking crime exposure to school dropout. These findings show that the externalities of organized crime impose persistent social costs, deepening inequality and undermining human capital development. 

Birthorder Effect in Reconstructed Families   with  Abi  Adams,  Aline Bütikofer, and Katrine V. Løken
Status: Data analysis 

Before PhD

An information-based risk analysis IT tool protecting the European food system(s) (Technical Report at JRC- European Commission) with Riccardo Siligato, Franz Ulberth

The Farm to Fork Strategy has recognised the necessity of intensifying efforts to combat fraudulent practices within the agri-food chain while simultaneously enhancing traceability and alert systems to improve coordination in addressing food fraud.

A substantial volume of food chain data is already accessible at European and international levels, enabling a shift towards a digital, risk-based approach to safeguarding the food system. Nevertheless, this data is dispersed across various food businesses, competent authorities in Member States, and Commission services, and data sets are not always interoperable. The European Commission could harness its in-house resources, as existing databases, intelligence sources, and digital tools, to aggregate relevant food chain information. This aggregation can enhance descriptive analytics for visualizing current food safety and fraud issues, diagnostic analytics for identifying potential underlying causes, and predictive analytics for more effectively targeting risk-based official controls. The report recommends incentivising food integrity data sharing among Member States’ competent authorities and the European Commission, creating a public-private partnership for transitioning the supply chain to digital traceability, and developing an AI-driven predictive analytics system to support targeting control activities to supply chains where fraud is most likely. It also proposes a project to assess supply chain vulnerabilities.