Research

“Effects of conflicts on intimate partner violence: Evidence from Mexico” (2023)  

Can public violence spill over to intimate partner violence (IPV) and if so, through which channels? This paper uses the unexpected and geographically heterogeneous rise in drug-related violence occurring in Mexico since December 2006 to analyze whether living in a municipality increasingly exposed to violent crime changes a household’s internal use of violence. Combining georeferenced conflict data with survey data on household dynamics, I use two difference-in-differences methodologies to show that a rise in conflict-related homicides leads to a significant increase in the share of women experiencing both acts and threats of physical violence by their male partners. This trend is found in parallel to an average rise in women’s tolerance for partner abuse, and a drop in divorces on grounds of domestic violence in those affected municipalities. Furthermore, IPV growth is mostly found amongst households where the woman has low bargaining power. Thus, the conflict effect on IPV is associated with a rising tolerance for violence, which might become a new instrument for the male partner to get more decision-making power, especially when the woman’s outside options seem hampered.

“Impact evaluation of the Lumière Project” (2018) with T. Heidelk, J. Jadin, J.C. Muñoz-Mora, R.L. Ngenzebuke & P. Verwimp. UNICEF Evaluation Report.

In rural areas of Burundi, a very small percentage of households have access to the electricity grid, resulting in a high reliance on other sources of energy such as wood, batteries and kerosene. These sources are costly, inefficient, unhealthy, and environmentally harmful. The use of energy is an important indicator of the welfare level of a household, a village, and an entire country. Through the Lumière Project, UNICEF Burundi seeks to contribute to diminishing energy poverty by introducing rechargeable lamps in rural villages where households are not linked to the grid. This is meant to increase the availability of light in the household, reduce costs, improve efficiency, reduce the use of unhealthy energy sources as well as their negative environmental impact. Using a social enterprise model, the intervention aims to leverage the power of the market and create a chain reaction of mutual social and economic impacts. Our impact evaluation finds that the Lumière project increased welfare, which was measured through consumption, by around 14.5% in the collines (localities) that were treated. 

“The equality impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Irish labour market” (2024) with F. McGinnity and H. Russell.

The COVID-19 pandemic had profound repercussions on the lives of people in Ireland and around the world. While everyone was impacted, there is abundant evidence that the effects were not equally felt across all members of society. In this paper, we analyse the repercussions of the pandemic on the Irish labour market, focusing on the structurally vulnerable groups, i.e. those particularly at risk of inequality or having their rights denied. We compare the situation of these groups in terms of their employment and the nature of their jobs pre- and post-pandemic (i.e. 2019 vs. 2022) using the Irish Labour Force Survey and the Survey on Income and Living Conditions. We investigate how the labour market conditions evolved following the pandemic, comparing estimates by ability, gender, age, marital status, family status, and educational qualifications. Most inequalities observed in the Irish labour market in 2019 are found to remain by 2022, namely that women, lone parents, families with children, and less educated people have less employment opportunities and worst working conditions than other groups. Working conditions are measured through quantity of work; quality of work; and the possibility to work from home. We find some evidence that labour conditions for younger people as well as for disabled people improved over the observed years, potentially due to a wider use of remote work. While the latter rose for all observed subgroups, the least educated workers, and those residing in rural areas benefitted the least from this growing trend.