My current research explores the economics of parenting and child development, with a focus on the mechanisms through which household behavior and policy interventions shape the accumulation of human capital. It examines the impact of parental decision-making on children’s human capital investment, the interaction between social norms, institutional constraints, and economic incentives in determining parenting choices, and the role of children’s and adolescents’ time allocation in the production of cognitive and non-cognitive skills. 


My ongoing financed projects are: 

TEMPO (2023-2026): The Equalizing effect of universal Music school PrOgrams (PRIN P20225RFWZ).  


Recent working papers (available on line) and under review in a peer-reviewed journal are: 

This paper estimates the long-term causal effects of music proficiency on emotional intelligence and mental health. Leveraging the staggered rollout of a school orchestra program as a quasi-experimental setting, we identify the causal impact of adolescent musical engagement. Our findings reveal that music training significantly improves both emotional intelligence and mental health into young adulthood. Specifically, musical proficiency fosters key non-cognitive traits, including self-motivation, optimism and adaptability, while also mitigating symptoms of poor mental health, including depression and anxiety. These positive effects are particularly pronounced for males and second-generation migrants. Our evidence demonstrates that learning music has a lasting positive impact on non-cognitive skills, suggesting that universal educational music programs can be a powerful, long-term tool for human capital development and inequality reduction. 

This paper examines how an adolescent's relative socioeconomic status (SES) within their school influences their socioemotional development and well-being. Although peer effects on academic outcomes are well-documented, less is known about how an individual's socioeconomic rank among peers shapes non-cognitive skills. Using PISA 2022 data and a school fixed effects model, we investigate the relationship between two measures of relative SES—Socioeconomic Rank and Socioeconomic Gap—and a range of outcomes, including socioemotional skills, self-esteem, and attitudes toward school. Our results show that higher within-school SES rank is significantly associated with better socioemotional skills, greater well-being, and stronger academic motivation. We also find important heterogeneity by gender and migrant background. These findings highlight that an individual's relative socioeconomic position, beyond absolute resources, plays a critical role in shaping adolescent non-cognitive development. 

This paper estimates the short-run impact of parental risky behaviors on multiple dimensions of child development using 30 years of data from a representative Russian longitudinal survey. We use factor analysis to construct a composite index of parental risky behaviors and health habits. The panel nature of the data allows us to implement individual and household fixed-effects models, which control for all time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity that might correlate with both parenting and child outcomes. We find that exposure to parental risky behaviors adversely affects children’s educational attainment (grade-for-age) and increases their propensity for risky behaviors, specifically smoking and drinking. Conversely, we find no significant impact on soft skills and only weak evidence of negative health outcomes. These impacts are more pronounced for older children and those in higher-income households. 

Drawing on unique longitudinal data from the Young Lives project in Peru (Rounds 4 and 5) that records information on maternal expectations regarding future old-age support, this paper tests a novel hypothesis. We examine whether heightened maternal expectations for elderly care are associated with adolescents’ socio-emotional development via increased psychological strain and perceived filial burden. Socio-emotional development is identified using a battery of standardized psychological scales that measure key intra and inter personal constructs, including self-efficacy, self-esteem, pride, and the quality of peer relationships. To address concerns regarding unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causality, we employ a fixed-effects panel data model and a two-stage least squares instrumental variable approach using local female labor market instability as the exclusion restriction. Results show that mothers’ expectations for elderly support have a significantly negative causal effect on adolescents’ socio-emotional development. These findings underscore that increasing economic stability in low and middle-income countries can reduce dependency on familial intergenerational transfers, mitigating the psychological burden placed on children in poor families.

This study investigates the association between childhood parenting styles and the emergence of risk-taking behaviors in young adulthood, a critical life course transition. Utilizing data on risk-taking behaviors among college students, alongside variables reflecting parent-child relationships in the family of origin, we derive classifications of parenting styles. The empirical findings reveal that individuals exposed to authoritarian parenting, and to a lesser extent, permissive parenting, demonstrate an increased propensity for engaging in diverse risk-taking behaviors, both in frequency and intensity. Conversely, authoritative parenting appears to exert a partial mitigating influence on these behaviors. Furthermore, by analyzing a sub-sample of students who migrated to a different province to enroll in a University degree, we explore the impact of parental social norms prevalent in their provinces of origin on these behaviors, observing a limited effect. These findings contribute to the understanding of how family and environmental influences during critical life stages shape health-related behaviors and potentially impact life-course and human capital trajectories. 

This study examines how institutional quality and economic inequality influence parenting decisions across Latin America. Parenting is conceptualized as a strategic response to structural conditions, where families adapt both long-term approaches and short-term disciplinary tactics to local environments. Unlike much of the existing literature, which focuses on high-income countries, this analysis integrates parenting styles and disciplinary practices, emphasizing the role of behavioral control in low- and middle-income contexts. Using cross-country data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), the study presents stylized facts and investigates cross-sectional associations between governance, inequality, and parenting behaviors. Results indicate that families adjust their strategies in response to institutional environments, particularly in settings with limited public support and uncertain intergenerational mobility. These findings highlight the importance of considering governance and inequality as key drivers of parenting practices in developing regions. 


I am also currently working on the following projects: