• "Women’s Education and Household Labor Supply: Causal Evidence From Turkey", with Luca Paolo Merlino. Submitted 

This paper studies how increasing women's education affects household labor supply decisions by exploiting a compulsory schooling reform in Turkey. Using the induced exogenous reduction in educational gaps in a regression discontinuity design, our results show that women affected by the reform are more likely to be employed, especially as wage earners; while the household labor income increases, their husbands work less. These effects are more pronounced for households living in regions with more conservative gender norms. These findings suggest that traditional gender norms hamper the effect of women's increased education on their welfare.

• "To Veil or Not to Veil? Assessing the Removal of Headscarf Ban in a Muslim Country", with Wenqi Lu. Submitted 

This paper examines the labor and marriage market effects of lifting the headscarf ban in Turkey. Using Household Labor Force Survey data, we employ a difference-in-differences approach, leveraging novel methods to predict veiling status. The reform increased veiled women’s employment, primarily in the public sector, while non-veiled women shifted to private-sector jobs. Veiled women also experienced lower informal employment and greater job stability. Marriage rates remained unchanged, but veiled women became more likely to marry wage-earning partners with a larger spousal age gap. Effects were similar across regions with high and low veiling prevalence, suggesting broader implications for minority contexts.

• "Improving Preschool Quality for Disadvantaged Children", with Thomas van Huizen. A new draft will be available soon

High-quality early childhood education strongly predicts early learning and development, with potentially long-lasting effects into adulthood. A major policy challenge is therefore how to ensure equal access to high-quality early childhood education. This paper examines how complementing preschool staff with pedagogical leaders (coaches) affects the quality of teacher-child interactions and child development, leveraging a nationwide reform in the Netherlands. Using unique data on classroom observations and early childhood development in a difference-in-difference framework, we find that pedagogical leaders improved educational quality in the classrooms, particularly in terms of language modeling, but had no impact on emotional quality. Furthermore, the frequency of small group educational activities with disadvantaged children increased. Consistent with the evidence on preschool quality, the results indicate that language development of disadvantaged children improved. There is no evidence of gains in other development domains. Exploring potential channels, we document that staff exposed to the reform were more likely to experience being observed by and receiving feedback from a coach, while ruling out alternative explanations such as changes in teacher characteristics, staff-child ratio, classroom composition, or other professional development activities.

• "Gender Wage Gap, Maternal Bargaining Power and Intergenerational Transmission of Attitudes". A new draft will be available soon

This paper explores the causal effect of mothers' relative wages on the intergenerational transmission of gender role attitudes by exploiting local market-level potential wages for parents when their child is aged 10-15. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, while I find no effect of potential wages on the gender role attitudes of parents, I provide evidence that higher relative wages for mothers during their children's adolescence increase the similarity between the traditional gender role attitudes of mothers and their children in adulthood. Examining potential mechanisms, the results show that an increase in mothers' relative potential wages leads to greater parental involvement, particularly for mothers with more traditional gender role attitudes. The results support the household bargaining explanations.