Research

• Gender Gaps in Time Use: Evidence from School Closures during Covid-19  

 (joint with Benjamin Elsner, Massimiliano Mascherini, & Sanna Nivakoski)

Abstract: We study the impact of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic on the time allocated to paid and unpaid work within households. We use panel data from 27 EU countries and isolate the impact of school closures by comparing parents and non-parents. We find no evidence that school closures had a disproportionate impact on women or men. Women and men reduced the time spent on paid work and increased the amount of time spent on household chores and leisure in roughly equal amounts. These findings do not confirm the common concern that school closures increased the care burden for women.

• The Effects of Public Health and Social Measures (PHSMs) on Mental Health: Pan-European Quantile Regression Analysis. [Policy Brief] 

(joint with Massimiliano Mascherini)

A Quantile Regression Analysis of Mental Health Outcomes under COVID‑19 Public Health and Social Measures across 27 EU Countries 

Abstract: This policy note examines how COVID‑19 public health and social measures (PHSMs) have affected mental health across all 27 EU member states, using quantile regression to capture distributional impacts. The analysis finds that while PHSMs helped “flatten the curve” of infections, they also widened pre-existing mental health gaps. Mental well-being declined overall for certain demographic groups and those already at lower levels of mental health disproportionately affected and less resilient. 

• Lower Participation Bounds in Complete-Information All-Pay Auctions 

Abstract: We characterise the Nash equilibria of a two-player, complete-information all-pay auction in which each player must incur a minimum positive cost to compete. The feasible strategy set is Si = {0} ∪ [ki, ∞), where ki ≥ 0 is player i’s participation floor. When both floors are non-exclusionary (k1 < v2 and k2 < v2), the unique mixed-strategy equilibrium preserves the payoff structure of Baye et al. (1996): the stronger player earns v1 − v2 and the weaker player earns zero, while the weaker player’s non-participation probability increases linearly in its floor at slope 1/v1. The floor acts on contest frequency, not on the distribution of rents. When the weaker player’s floor is exclusionary (k2 ≥ v2), the unique equilibrium is pure: the stronger player enters at its own minimum cost k1 and earns v1 − k1. The stronger player benefits from this outcome relative to the contested case if and only if k1 < v2. Aggregate equilibrium expenditure is non-monotone in a common floor level.

• Physical Disposal and Allocative Waste: Two Measures That Come Apart [Conceptual Note] 

Abstract: Standard food-waste measurement counts what is not eaten. This note proposes allocative waste i.e. food allocated beyond nutritional need to one agent when another remains below subsistence as another measure. Using a two-agent Stone - Geary economy with perishable food endowments, we show that the two measures are not monotonically related: a redistribution of endowments that eliminates allocative waste can increase physical disposal, and vice versa. Physical disposal arises naturally from perishability; agents cannot carry surplus endowment forward, so food demanded below endowment is lost. The divergence follows from a composition effect in the Linear Expenditure System: redistribution from the wealthier to the poorer agent raises the recipient's food demand but lowers the donor's, and since the donor's food endowment is fixed and perishable, their unconsumed surplus rises. We prove the divergence under general (asymmetric) preference parameters, characterise the efficient planner's allocation, and solve the constrained government problem when only a food tax-and-transfer instrument is available. The efficient instrument is not a disposal levy but a transfer targeted at the subsistence gap.