Research

Publications

Focal pricing and pass-through. Accepted at the International Journal of Industrial Organization.

IFS working paper available here.

Pass-through rates are relevant in a variety of contexts, such as estimating antitrust damages. It is often asserted that focal pricing, the practice of charging only special prices, e.g. ending in 9s, reduces the degree of pass-through in an industry. This claim has had serious consequences; for example, it has contributed to the dismissal of high-profile antitrust cases. However, it is not grounded in economic theory or evidence. I prove that, in a simple but general framework, expected pass-through is unchanged by the presence of focal pricing constraints. Therefore, the fact that an industry is characterised by focal pricing constraints does not entail that it will also be characterised by a low pass-through rate. 

Work in progress

Estimating intra-household inequality from time-use data. Job market paper. IFS working paper here.

Estimating intra-household sharing is crucial to understanding overall inequality. Standard measures of consumption inequality only take into account inequality between, and not within, households, because expenditure surveys are generally available only at the household level. I develop a new approach to estimating intra-household sharing, which is both grounded in a general collective household model, and simple to implement with widely available data. I propose using individual-level variation from time-use data to identify the way households share resources between members. For UK working couples, my methodology reveals substantial intra-household inequality, and the poverty rate is 20.59% higher for women than men.

The impact of female empowerment on household emissions. Joint work with Florine Le Henaff. IFS working paper available here.

Existing evidence from surveys and text analysis of social media suggests that women have more pro-environmental attitudes than men. However, there is little evidence of concrete gender differences in patterns of greenhouse gas emissions. Using UK data, this paper finds that, for singles, the emissions intensity of consumption is lower for women than men. Additionally, we estimate intra-household bargaining power for heterosexual working couples and find that greater female empowerment is associated with lower household emissions intensity. If the average household transitioned to gender-equal bargaining, emissions from household consumption would fall by 2.5%, a similar order of magnitude to switching to a vegetarian diet. Our findings suggest that policies aimed at increasing female bargaining power, for instance by narrowing gender pay gaps, may have the additional benefit of reducing household emissions.

Parental Leave in the UK. Joint with Barbara Petrongolo and Monica Costa Dias.

Reforming parental leave has the potential to drive profound change in the intra-household allocation of work and childcare responsibilities. This could unlock welfare improvements for households; narrow the gender pay gap; increase fertility rates in aging societies; and increase workforce participation in tight labour markets, unlocking macroeconomic growth. Using a novel UK tax dataset, this paper is the first to provide a detailed picture of parental leave in the UK. I partly observe and partly infer duration of parental leave, and pay over that period. Since I observe the universe of employees, I am also able to estimate firm-level parental leave policies. It is common for employers to offer enhanced occupational pay topping up statutory pay, which is low in the UK. In this initial paper, I document patterns in the data and discuss policy implications. Follow-up work will involve structural estimation to quantitatively estimate the potential impact of policy counterfactuals.