Working Papers
The distinctive traits of early settlers at initial stages of institutional development may be crucial for cultural formation. In 1973, the cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky postulated this in his doctrine of “first effective settlement”. I investigate this doctrine and identify its short and long-run implications for gender norms in the United States. I focus on county creation events to capture counties at early stages of cultural and institutional development. I capture settlers’ culture using past female labor force participation, women’s suffrage, and financial rights at settlers’ place of origin. I document the distinctive characteristics of settlers’ populations and provide suggestive evidence in support of the transmission of gender norms across space and time. My results show that women’s labor supply is higher, in both the short and long run, in U.S. counties that historically hosted a larger settler population originating from places with favorable gender attitudes. My findings shed new light on the importance of the characteristics of immigrants and their place of origin for cultural formation in hosting societies.
Mention: Marginal Revolution
[CGO wp2023] [ECARES wp2022-02]
“Frontier History and Gender Norms in the United States” (with Samuel Bazzi, Abel Brodeur and Martin Fiszbein)
[nber wp31079] [cepr dp18069] [CESifo wp11598]
[Revise & Resubmit: Journal of the European Economic Association (JEEA)]
This paper explores how historical gender roles become entrenched as norms over the long run. In the historical United States, gender roles on the frontier looked starkly different from those in settled areas. Male-biased sex ratios led to higher marriage rates for women and lower for men. Land abundance favored higher fertility. The demands of childcare, compounded with isolation from extended family as well as a lack of social and market infrastructure, constrained female opportunities outside the home. Frontier women were less likely to report “gainful employment,” but among those who did, relatively more had high-status occupations. Together, these findings integrate contrasting narratives about frontier women—some emphasizing their entrepreneurial independence, others their prevailing domesticity. The distinctive frontier gender roles, in turn, shaped norms over the long run. Counties with greater historical frontier exposure exhibit lower female labor force participation through the 21st century. Time use data suggests this does not come with additional leisure but rather with more household work. These gender inequalities are accompanied by weaker political participation among women. While the historical frontier may have been empowering for some women, its predominant domesticity reinforced inegalitarian gender norms over the long run.
Mention: Marginal Revolution
“Female-Specific Labor Regulation and Employment: Historical Evidence from the United States” (with Lamis Kattan)
[GLO DPs 1518] [CESifo wp11546]
[Accepted: Journal of Labor Economics (JOLE)]
By the end of the nineteenth century, labor legislation for women had become a prominent issue in the United States, with most states enacting at least one female-specific work regulation. We examine the impact of three previously unexplored legislation: seating, health and safety, and night-work regulations. Given that not all states adopted these laws, and the staggered na- ture of adoption, we rely on a difference-in-differences strategy design to estimate the effects on female gainful employment. Our findings indicate that laws regulating health and safety con- ditions and restricting women’s night work increased the likelihood of female employment by about 4% to 8%, accounting for about 10% to 20% from the total increase during our period of analysis. Examining heterogeneous effects reveals that younger and married women without children witnessed the largest increase in the likelihood of employment. We also document that native, higher-class and literate women were also incentivized to join the workforce. Women’s labor supply in the decades under consideration has been estimated to be quite inelastic with respect to own wage. Nevertheless, we find sizable labor force participation responses to the female-specific labor regulation we study. This indicates that the legislation must have shifted women’s labor supply curves, either because it made jobs more pleasant, or because it improved perceptions about how respectable it is for a woman to work in the labor market. Both chan- nels would reduce disutility from work, and increase labor supply at any given wage level. Our findings hold important implications for policymakers and advocates seeking to promote gender equality in the labor market.
Mention: CWEC/CFÉC Newsletter
Best Paper Award for Young Economists SITES-GLO 2024 conference
Publications
“Institutions, Attitudes and LGBT: Evidence from the Gold Rush” (with Abel Brodeur)
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, July 2021, Vol. 187, p. 92-110
This paper relates the size of the present-day LGBT population to the discovery of gold during the nineteenth century gold rushes. Comparing the surroundings of gold rush counties to other mining counties, we find that there are currently 15 percent more same-sex couples in former gold rush counties and that residents of these counties have more favorable attitudes toward homosexuality. Gold rush counties were initially isolated, mostly uninhabited and lacked strong formal institutions, which helped shaping pro-LGBT attitudes. Examining channels of persistence, we provide empirical evidence for selective migration and the lack of strong religious institutions.
Mention: Alice Evans Blog
“Determinants of Family Stress and Domestic Violence: Lessons from the COVID-19 Outbreak” (with Louis-Philippe Beland, Abel Brodeur and Derek Mikola)
Canadian Public Policy, September 2021, Vo. 47, No. 3, p. 439-459
We study the impacts of COVID-19 on domestic violence and family stress. Our empirical analysis relies on a unique survey conducted online, the Canadian Perspective Survey Series, which allows us to investigate the determinants of perceived levels of family stress and domestic violence during the first COVID-19 lockdown. We find no evidence that changes in work arrangements are related to perceived levels of family stress and violence in the home due to confinement. In contrast, we find that the inability to meet financial obligations and perceived concerns about maintaining social ties are significantly related to perceived concerns of family stress and domestic violence.
Work in Progress
“Inheritance Customs, the European Marriage Pattern, and Female Empowerment” (with Matthew Curtis, Paula Gobbi and Marc Goñi)
Funded by ERC Starting Grant 947654, IDED, granted to Paula Gobbi
Through high celibacy rates and late ages at first marriage, the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) limited fertility in Western Europe well before the Industrial Revolution. While the EMP is considered an early determinant of European development, few studies have examined the roots of this institution. In this paper, we show that inheritance customs shaped the EMP and allowed to sustain it over time. We construct a novel atlas of local inheritance customs for pre-industrial France and Belgium and examine individual-level marriage decisions from genealogical records for the 18th and 19th centuries. Our preliminary findings show that inheritance customs affected marriage patterns through two distinct channels: women's autonomy and eased economic constraints to form a household.
“Collective Memory and National Identity Formation: The Role of Family and the State” (with Björn Brey and Lamis Kattan)
We examine how extreme political repression shapes national identity. Using newly geocoded micro-level survey data linked to the 1932–33 Soviet Great Famine, which claimed millions of Ukrainian lives, we find that historical famine exposure increases contemporary Ukrainian selfidentification. Excess mortality from weather shocks supports the plausibly causal interpretation of our results. Tracing family origins across generations, we show how regime change–from Soviet suppression to state-led remembrance–shifted the transmission of the Holodomor’s legacy from vertical (family) to horizontal (institutions). Finally, we document the famine’s lasting impact on Ukrainian-Russian trade behavior and its relevance to the ongoing conflict.
“Men in Times of Crisis” (with Lamis Kattan and Taylor Wright)
“Inheritance, Fertility, and Son Preference: Evidence from Pre-Industrial France” (with Lamis Kattan and Tommaso D'Amelio)
Published Policy Papers
“A Political Economy Of The Tobacco Supply Chain in an Eastern Mediterranean Country: The Case of Lebanon” (with Ali Abboud, Ali Chalak and Mariam Radwan)
PLOS One, March 2025, 20(3), No. e0320050
The literature on tobacco has traditionally focused on health effects, public policies for tobacco control, and smoker profiles. However, there is a notable gap in understanding the supply chains and industry practices within the tobacco market. This paper addresses this gap by examining the structure of the tobacco market in Lebanon. Using an exploratory qualitative research approach, this paper maps the tobacco supply chain in Lebanon and investigates the interactions among various stakeholders, including key policymakers, regulators, researchers, and industry experts, as well as their underlying interests. Lebanon is a compelling case study due to its high smoking prevalence, the presence of a state-owned tobacco monopoly (the Regie Libanaise de Tabacs et Tombacs (Regie)), and the ongoing financial crisis that has affected various sectors, including the tobacco industry. The findings reveal three key issues: a complex political economy centered around monopolization and conflicting interests, the absence of a clear national strategy on tobacco leading to ineffective policy formulation, and inefficient tobacco cultivation practices requiring reforms for sustainable agricultural development. To address these issues, it is proposed to foster a more competitive and revenue-efficient tobacco market through the dissolution of the Regie monopoly via horizontal and vertical integration. This includes adopting an excise-specific tax on domestically manufactured tobacco goods and optimizing sales taxes on locally traded items. Secondly, expanding antitrust laws to encompass the tobacco industry and introducing legislative measures for fees and taxes are recommended to create an enabling environment for competition and revenue generation. Thirdly, reforming tobacco cultivation practices requires abolishing the current cultivation licensing framework, offering financial compensation to existing license holders, and supporting farmers in transitioning to alternative crops.
“Does Income Class Affect Life Satisfaction? New Evidence from Cross-Country Microdata” (with Jad Chaaban, Ali Chalak and Hala Ghattas)
MDPI, Social Sciences, June 2022, Vo. 11, No. 6, p. 262
This paper analyzes the impact of income class on subjective wellbeing. Using rich data from the Gallup World Poll, we investigate whether belonging to locally (both country- and time-specific) defined income classes influences individuals’ life satisfaction. We rely on a latent class analysis estimation method, using individual income proxied by household income divided by household size, as an observable characteristic to hypothesize the income classes. We fit a model with one categorical latent variable with three unobserved groupings, here: income classes, which we interpret as lower, middle and upper classes. Our estimates suggest that individuals in the low and middle income classes are, respectively, about 30 and 17 percent of a standard deviation less likely to report a higher life satisfaction in comparison to individuals belonging to the upper income class. The effect of income classes remains robust to the inclusion of standard explanatory variables in this literature.
“The Impact of Minimum Unit Pricing on Youth Alcohol Consumption: Insights from a Volumetric Choice Experiment in Lebanon” (with Jad Chaaban, Ali Chalak and Lilian Ghandour).
Health Policy & Planning, March 2022, czac021. doi: 10.1093/heapol/czac021
This paper analyses the impact of introducing an alcohol minimum unit pricing policy on youth’s off-premise alcohol consumption. We rely on price elasticities derived using stated preference alcohol purchase data from a survey of 1024 university students in Lebanon. Selectively targeting drinks with high ethanol concentration by applying a minimum unit pricing (MUP) corresponding to the maximum price that respondents are willing to pay per beverage achieves a reduction in ethanol intake close to 0.23 l/month (∼28% of pre-MUP ethanol intake). Imposing a flat MUP corresponding to the average price respondents are willing to pay for all alcoholic beverages decreases ethanol intake by nearly half the reduction from the previous targeted MUP. This work provides evidence in favour of MUP in conjunction with taxation capable of substantially reducing alcohol consumption. We also document a positive welfare benefit of MUP.
Policy research paper for UN Women Arab States on ``Assessing macroeconomic response policies to COVID-19 in the Arab region: what implications for women’s economic empowerment?”, lead author: Nisreen Salti, September 2021.
Background paper on ``Building Resilient Food Systems in the Arab Region” prepared in contribution to the 2020 edition of the ``Near East and North Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition- Enhancing Resilience of Food Systems in the Arab States”, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), lead author: Ali Chalak, January 2021.
Report
Research associate United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-- Arab Human Development Report 2021