Research
Research
Flexibility for equality: Examining the impact of flexible working time arrangements on women's convergence in working hours.
British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2024.
Abstract: Despite the rise in women's education and their increased participation in the workforce, there is still a lack of gender convergence in working hours. This study explores how flexible working time arrangements (FWTA) affect the convergence of women's working hours to those of men with similar job-related characteristics. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel and innovative methods to address endogeneity, the analysis suggests that FWTA, compared to fixed schedules, positively influence women's convergence. This is particularly pronounced among those working full-time, the more educated, and those aged between 30 and 45. Transitioning to FWTA is associated with increased overtime and childcare hours but it is not related to more housework.
Link to paper
This article is awarded as a top-ranked nominee for the Kanter Award for research excellence in work-family issues (March 2025).
When She Works More Than Her Partner: Gender Norms and Women's Life Satisfaction in Australia.
Revised and Resubmitted
Abstract: This study uses multiple waves of the HILDA survey to examine how partnered women’s relative working hours affect life satisfaction, accounting for unpaid domestic labour. Women who work more hours than their male partners report significantly lower life satisfaction, primarily due to noncompliance with gender norms in paid work. The decline is greatest among women who also shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid labour, with well-being losses stemming almost equally from norm non-compliance and time pressures. These findings highlight the enduring impact of gender norms and underscore the need for policies that address both labour market inequality and unequal domestic responsibilities.
Draft available upon request
Partnering for Career Success? Investigating the Wage Effects of Couples’ Occupational Linkage
Under Review
Abstract: This paper investigates whether one spouse’s entry into the other’s occupation affects the incumbent partner’s wages. Using longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey (2001–2018), a couple-level fixed-effects design identifies the causal impact of spousal co-specialisation while mitigating time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity. Across multiple robustness checks—including different specifications, placebo regressions, a non-absorbing event‐study framework, and an instrumental variable approach leveraging past peer transitions—evidence shows that women gain five to six percent in hourly wages when their husbands move into their occupation. By contrast, men do not experience a comparable wage boost when wives make the same transition. The well-being boost and the husband’s bargaining power explain a sizable portion of the female wage premium, whereas skill spillovers and schedule alignment appear to be less influential mechanisms. These results highlight how spousal alignment can foster women’s earnings via enhanced motivation, transparency, and negotiation leverage. They also underscore a noteworthy gender asymmetry, indicating that men’s wages remain relatively insensitive to occupational linkage.
Draft available upon request
To be (worried) or not to be? The Causal Impact of Minimum Wage Increases on Aggregate Prices, with Fikret Bilenkisi and M. Akif Yardimci.
Under Review
Abstract: This paper estimates the causal effect of statutory minimum wage increases on aggregate consumer prices across 29 OECD countries during the synchronised inflationary cycle of 2021–2024. Exploiting staggered minimum wage reviews under a rare quasi-experimental environment of common global shocks, we implement a dynamic, dose-response difference-in-differences estimator that accommodates the cumulative, non-absorbing nature of wage floors and evolving treatment intensity. A 10 percent increase in the minimum wage raises aggregate prices by 0.3 percent over five months, with effects concentrated in food prices. Our estimates fall within the range of prior micro- and sectoral studies, but extend the literature by recovering the full temporal pass-through path. Our design-based approach demonstrates that credible causal inference is attainable in macro panels without micro-level data. The findings clarify the inflationary footprint of wage policies and offer a replicable framework for policy evaluation in macro-labour contexts.
Link to paper
This article was featured in an interview with Faculti.net and presented at the Department for Work and Pensions LINK seminar series.
Paternity Leave and Child Outcomes, with M. Akif Yardimci.
Recent literature shows that paternity leave reforms have successfully increased the presence of fathers in the home after childbirth, as well as their long-term involvement in childcare and household chores. However, little is known about the extent to which the effects are transmitted to the next generation. To the best of our knowledge, only three studies, still unpublished, consider potential spillover effects of paternity leave from parents to children. Farré, Felfe, González, and Schneider (2021) find that at age 12, children whose fathers were eligible for paternity leave in Spain exhibit more egalitarian attitudes towards gender roles and engage more in counter-stereotypical behaviours at home. Mikkelsen and Peter (2022) reveal that the Swedish “daddy month” reform of 1995, which provided 30 days of earmarked parental leave for fathers, increased the probability that girls choose math-intensive programs in secondary education. Fontenay and González (2024) find that male children whose parents were exposed to a paternity leave reform have less gender-stereotypical attitudes when they grow up and are more likely to choose female-stereotypical occupations such as healthcare and education. We focus on the 2007 parental leave reform in Germany, which encouraged fathers to take parental leave after childbirth. We exploit the variation due to this paternity leave reform using a Regression Discontinuity design to investigate whether greater paternal involvement can affect children’s cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes into adolescence and early adulthood.