Research
Published Papers
Too Afraid to Vote? The Effects of COVID-19 on Voting Behaviour (with Tania Fernández-Navia and David Tercero-Lucas) (European Journal of Political Economy. 2021).
This paper studies the causal effect of local exposure to COVID-19 on voting behavior and electoral outcomes using evidence from the regional elections held in Spain on 12 July 2020. Exploiting the variation in exposure to COVID-19 and using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we show that turnout was between 2.6 and 5.1 percentage points lower in municipalities that experienced positive cases of COVID-19. In addition, the results show a substantial increase in the probability of voting for nationalist parties. We discuss the idea of perceived fear being the potential mechanism driving our results.
Cultural expenditure of those who enter (or exit) unemployment (With Javier Gardeazabal) (Journal of Cultural Economics. 2021)
We estimate the effect of unemployment on cultural expenditure, income, and the income elasticity of cultural demand. When a household member enters an unemployment spell, households reduce cultural expenditure, and their income falls. Unemployment does not affect participation in cultural markets, and participating households exhibit larger income elasticity. The reduction in cultural expenditure and income is larger for men and individuals who hold a tertiary education degree tend to experience a larger income fall and a smaller cultural expenditure reduction. We find that the reduction in cultural expenditure is much larger during a recession, while the effect of unemployment on household income does not fluctuate that much over the business cycle.
The Effect of Economic Shocks on Mental Health Outcomes: Evidence from The Spanish Great Recession (Forum for Health Economics & Policy. 2023)
This research examines the consequences of economic shocks at micro and macro levels on subjective mental health. At the individual level, evidence indicates that individuals displaced from their jobs are likely to report worse mental health, take mental illness drugs, and visit a mental health specialist. Using a shock at the aggregate level, the findings from a diff-in-diff design show that an economic downturn increases the mental health gap between employed and unemployed individuals. However, a recession reduces the prescription of mental health drugs, and medical attendance is insignificant, suggesting the presence of a stigma around mental health illness. Finally, the evidence provided suggests that the effects are heterogeneous, depending on individual characteristics. In particular, those individuals with larger deviations from the social norm are those reporting larger impacts. These findings might be helpful in policy design.
Work in Progress
Household Consumption Response to Labor Market Transitions (With Javier Gardeazabal)
What is the impact of labor market transitions on household consumption? We assess the effect of transitions from employment to unemployment and vice versa, from employment to retirement, from fixed-term to indefinite employment, and from part-time to full-time employment and vice versa. Using data that constitutes a random sample, and methods mimicking random assignment, the results achieve internal and external validity. The evidence reported includes tests of theoretical predictions derived from the Life-Cycle Permanent-Income model, symmetry of the consumption responses to transitions from employment to unemployment and vice versa, differential consumption responses over the business cycle, and the income-pooling hypothesis.
Labor Market Stability and Fertility Decisions (With Joan Monras and Javier Vazquez-Grenno)
This paper studies how fertility decisions respond to an improvement in job stability using variation from the large and unexpected regularization of undocumented immigrants in Spain implemented during the first half of 2005. This policy change improved substantially the labor market opportunities of affected men and women, many of which left the informality of house keeping service sectors toward more formal, stable, and higher paying jobs in larger firms (Elias et al., 2023). In this paper, we estimate the effects of the regularization on fertility rates using two alternative difference-in-differences strategies that compare fertility behavior of “eligible” and “non-eligible” candidate women to obtain the legal status, both on aggregate and at the local level. Our findings suggest that gaining work permits leads to a significant increase in women fertility. Our preferred estimates indicate that the regularization increased fertility rates among affected women by around 5 points, which is a 10 percent increase.