PAPERS:

Marriage patterns and the gender gap in labor force participation: evidence from Italy - Labour Economics, 2023, Elsevier, vol. 82(C) Link 

Presented at: 25th Spring Meeting of Young Economists (2021) organized by the European Association of Young Economists at the University of Bologna, 7th Potsdam PhD Workshop in Empirical Economics (2021) organized by the University of Potsdam, Applied Young Economist Webinar (2021) organized by the University of Warwick, PhD Conference in Economics 2021 jointly organized by University of Sassari and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Cultural Economics and Finance conference (2021) organized by the University of Trier, RGS Doctoral Conference in Economics (2022) organized by the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research 

The Italian rate of gender participation gap, defined as the differential between female and male rates of labor force participation, was 18.2% in 2020, the second highest among EU countries. In this paper, we present evidence highlighting a new possible determinant of this unbalance in the labor force: endogamy intensity. We define endogamy as “marriage within the community”, and we argue that it helps preserve and reinforce social norms stigmatizing working women, along with reducing the probability of divorce, which in turn disincentivizes women’s participation in the labor force. We proxy the endogamy rate of a community by the degree of concentration of its surnames’ distribution, and we provide evidence that a more intense custom of endogamy contributed to enlarging gender participation gaps across Italian municipalities in 2001. In order to deal with endogeneity issues, we make use of an instrumental variable strategy, by instrumenting the endogamy measure of a municipality by the degree of ruggedness of its territory: the asperity of a municipality’s surface indeed contributes to its geographical isolation, thus incentivizing inmarriage. In our main 2SLS result, a standard deviation increase in our proxy of endogamy is linked to roughly a 0.3 standard deviation increase in the gender participation gap of 2001. In addition, we provide evidence supporting our main hypothesis, documenting how higher rates of in-marriage are linked to the preservation of social norms and to greater marriage stability, with a lower probability of divorce.

Political power and the influence of minorities: theory and evidence from Italy- Submitted Link 

Presented at: BSE PhD Jamboree (2022) organized by the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, NSEF PhD and Postdoc Workshop (2022) organized by the University Federico II, Internal seminar at the University of Bologna (2022), Brown Bag seminar at the University of Milan (2023), Conference on “Institutions, knowledge diffusion and economic development”  organized by CRENOS (2023)

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between minority and majority in politics, and how it can influence policy outcomes and potential conflict between parties. In particular, we focus on the consequences of a sudden increase in the political power of a minority (e.g. female politicians after a gender quota), and its potential effects on the relationship with the long-standing majority. We first present a theoretical model describing the possible consequences of such an increase in a minority’s political power and show how it can increase difficulties in reaching a compromise on policy outcomes between parties. In the case of a high increase in minority’s power, its demands in terms of policy outcomes increase and make the compromise costlier for the majority, which might prefer to engage in conflict. Furthermore, we empirically test these implications by exploiting the introduction in 2012 of a gender quota in Italian local elections. By the means of a Difference-in- Discontinuity strategy, we show how the generated increase in female politicians had heterogeneous effects on the level of funding for daycare, based on its differential effects on the share of post-quota women councillors. For high shares of female councillors, a decrease in expenditure for day care was observed, while in municipalities with low shares the quota was followed by an increase in funding for day care.

Information and quality of politicians: is transparency helping voters? - Work in Progress

In this paper, we study how voting choices are affected by giving voters more personal information on candidates right before elections. Specifically, we exploit the introduction of the “Spazzacorrotti” law in Italy in January 2019, which imposed to candidates at local elections to publish their CVs and criminal records at least 45 days before elections. By means of a Difference in Discontinuity strategy, we find no effects on elected candidates’ age, gender, educational level, or ideology. Moreover, we present anecdotal evidence that candidates with a criminal record received fewer votes on average, but only in the case of local media exposure on this subject. We interpret these findings as a signal that voting choices are potentially influenced more by the criminal past of candidates with respect to other personal characteristics of politicians.