Research

Abstract: "A new life cycle of women’s labor force participation has emerged" Goldin and Mitchell (2017). Compared to previous cohorts, the employment profile of American college-educated married women born after the mid-1950s is flatter and higher with no hump but with a dip in the middle between ages 30-39. At the same time, these younger cohorts have delayed births, but their completed fertility rate has increased. I develop a quantitative theory to explain the changes in college-educated women's employment and fertility decisions across cohorts. First, I provide reduced-form evidence of a positive correlation between fertility and employment decisions. Second, I build a life-cycle model of labor supply and fertility decisions. My estimates indicate that college-educated women's marginal returns to experience increased by 46 percent. Although on-the-job accumulation of experience plays a crucial role, the model does not generate an increase in the total fertility rate in the absence of infertility treatments. Thus, to understand why women's new life-cycle employment profiles and fertility decisions are changing, both factors must be considered.

Presented: XXV Workshop on Dynamic Macroeconomics  (July 2022),   Spanish Economic Association  (December 2022),   5th Fiscal Policy Modelling European Commission Workshop (March 2023),   RES-SES 2023 Annual Conference (April 2023), EUI PhD Conference  (June 2023), BSE Summer Forum Workshop on Income Dynamics and the Family   (June 2023), EEA-ESEM Barcelona 2023  (August 2023),  Spring Meeting of Young Economists (SMYE) (September 2023), VI Workshop of the Spanish Macroeconomics Network (October 2023-expected), 2023 Fed St. Louis-JEDC-SCG-SNB  (October 2023).

Abstract: Many developed countries are at risk of experiencing population decline due to low fertility rates, with potential adverse economic effects. As a response, governments are deploying family policies to increase the number of children. In this paper, we propose a dynamic life-cycle model of fertility and female labor force participation to assess their effectiveness. We use the short-run fertility effects of a cash transfer policy from Spain to calibrate its parameters. Using the calibrated model, we find that the impacts in the long run are half as large as in the short run. This is driven by differences in the responses of younger and older women at the time of implementation. The latter must react shortly after, as they cannot delay fertility much longer. The former anticipate their first birth. This generates additional births in the short run. We also study the effects of an alternative policy consisting of childcare subsidization and explore how the coexistence of temporary and permanent contracts in Spain, which have different earnings profiles, affects fertility and interacts with cash transfers by raising the costs of career interruptions in crucial child-bearing years.

Best Paper Award at the 27th (Spring) Meeting of Young Economists, 2023

Presented: 2023 Frankfurt – Mannheim Macro Workshop (October 2023), Society for Income Dynamics (Scheduled June 2024)

Abstract: This paper studies the link between married couples' portfolio choices and property division rules. Using household data from the Spanish Survey of Household Finances, we exploit the regional variation in default marital property regimes in Spain to estimate the causal effects of property division rules on household financial investment. We find that separate-property couples hold riskier financial portfolios than community-property ones when wives are responsible for household finances. To rationalize this gap in risky asset holdings, we develop a financial portfolio choice model where wives make savings decisions and couples differ in their property division rule. Divorce risk encourages higher precautionary savings in safe assets for community-property households due to higher dissolution costs of marriage and the 50/50 sharing rule of marital savings. This translates into separate-property households saving less and allocating a larger portfolio share to risky assets. Lower income levels for wives leading household finances reinforce this mechanism, helping to match the property regime gap in risky financial investment. 

First Prize in the Antonio Dionis Soler 2023 Research Awards by the Spanish Institute of Analysts (Instituto Español de Analistas)

Presented: SAEe  (December 2023) EAYE (Scheduled May 2024)

Abstract: This paper studies the quantitative role of the female labor force participation increase in the Spanish Social Security system's sustainability. The model setup consists of overlapping generations with heterogeneous households. The economy is initially at a balanced growth path in 1975 when several demographic changes trigger a transitional path, and eventually, the economy will reach a new balanced growth situation. The transitional dynamics capture the increase in female labor force participation up to 2019.  This paper shows that women have been crucial to sustaining the Spanish pension system. The model shows that women have been financing 10% of male pensions, implying a redistribution of resources from women to men. This extra burden faced by women discouraged female labor supply and participation in the labor market. Finally, the introduction of Gender-based taxation in Spain seems an excellent policy that narrows gender gaps in the labor market and would make newborn cohorts, on average, better off under the balanced-budget assumption. 

Presented: Minnesota-Wisconsin International/Macro Student Workshop (May 2022), Spanish Economic Association  (December 2021), 13th Applied Economics Conference: Labour, Health, Education and Welfare (October 2021), Brazilian Meeting on Family and Gender Economics  (August 2021), Workshop on Dynamic Macroeconomics (July 2021), XIV Labour Economics Meeting (June 2021), 11th Annual Conference of the Spanish Association of Law and Economics (June 2021)  and 13th Ph.D. Workshop in Economics at Collegio Carlo Alberto and the University of Turin (December 2020).