Working Papers

Paternity Leave and Intimate Partner Violence (Job Market Paper) [Draft]

Presented at the 2nd workshop on Violence Against Women; the 16th Transatlantic Workshop on the Economics of Crime (TWEC); the 2025 annual meeting of the Society of Economics of the Household (SEHO); 11th AHEPE Irdes-Liraes Workshop; Brown Bag Seminar (IFS); Health Policy Internal Seminar (LSE); Doctorissimes Conference 2025; Research Seminar (UB).

Parental Time and Human Capital: Evidence from a Paternity Leave Reform [Slides]

with Lídia Farré and Libertad González

This paper investigates the causal impact of parental time investments during childhood on human capital development. We exploit the quasi-natural experiment resulting from the introduction of paternity leave in Spain in 2007. This reform substantially increased the time fathers devote to childcare in the short and long run. Therefore, the leave generated a persistent change in parental time allocations. We use high-quality administrative data on school grades of students enrolled in the second year of public primary schools (7-8 years old) and implement a difference-in-differences strategy to estimate the causal effect of the policy. We find that the reform has a positive impact on children’s school performance. The effect is asymmetric on gender. Math grades rise by 11% of a standard deviation for boys, but we find no effect for girls. Hence, the gender gap in Math increases. We explore the mechanisms and find suggestive evidence that fathers slightly select on the gender of their offspring when investing time in childcare. 

Best Paper Award in the PhD in Economics Workshop 2023 of the University of Barcelona.

Presented at EALE Conference 2024; XVI Labour Economics Meeting (UB); 3rd Junior Economist Meeting (UniMi); CESifo/ifo Junior Workshop on the Economics of Education 2024; 2023 annual meeting of the Society of Economics of the Household (SEHO); Third Catalan Economic Society Conference; 3rd Workshop on Economics and Sustainability (URV); 47th Simposio de la Asociación Española de Economía.

Gender gaps in the valuation of working conditions [Working Paper] Revise and resubmit, Labour Economics (October 2025). 

with Lídia Farré, Libertad González, and Laia Maynou

We conduct a survey experiment to examine gender differences in preferences for job attributes, including flexibility, commuting distance, and workplace climate. Both men and women are willing to trade 20–30% of their current wages to avoid inflexible jobs and long commutes. However, a notable gender difference emerges in the willingness-to-pay (WTP) to avoid sexual harassment. Women are willing to trade 50% of their wage for a secure workplace, 14 percentage points more than men. Among recent female victims, this aversion increases to 87%. These findings underscore the detrimental impact of sexual harassment on gender equality and talent allocation in the labor market.