Job market paper:
How Teams Substitute Workers: Evidence from the Healthcare Sector Link - Appendix
Abstract: I study how temporary absences of workers due to a health shock affect individual working hours, team organization and team production using a personnel dataset from a large hospital in Italy. Using an event study design, I present three key findings: (i) in teams with less skill-intensive tasks, such as in teams of nurses, young co-workers increase their working hours, but old co-workers do not (internal substitution); (ii) small teams of nurses include outsiders to cover temporary absences (external substitution); (iii) in teams with skill-intensive tasks, such as in teams of doctors, co-workers neither increase their working time nor are temporary outsiders hired. I find that services provided by teams of doctors decline more than those delivered by teams of nurses when they are affected by health shocks. The results suggest that individual-level health shocks affect team organization, co-workers and service provision.
Short Publications:
Excess economic burden of multimorbidity: a population-based study in Italy with Chiara Seghieri, Gaia Bertarelli and Sabina Nuti, Book of short papers SIS 2022, Pearson, pp. 1302-1307, Convegno: SIS2022 - 51ST SCIENTIFIC MEETING OF THE ITALIAN STATISTICAL SOCIETY, 22/06/2022 - 24/06/2022 (ISBN 9788891932310) Link
In Italy the increasing incidence of chronic disease and multimorbidity are major challenges for health systems. When a patient suffers from more than one chronic condition, the conditions can interact causing a significant increase in patients’ care needs. Using healthcare administrative databases of Tuscany region to identify cohorts of chronic prevalent patients and their total direct healthcare expenses, in this paper we aim to study the economic burden of multiple chronic conditions and calculate the excess cost when comorbidities occur in order to assess how combinations of chronic conditions in adults affect total direct health expenditure.
Working papers:
Productivity Training and Worker Independence: Evidence from India Link - Appendix
Abstract: Training programs are an important way for firms to enhance productivity, particularly in developing economies where workforce skill levels are often low. This paper evaluates a training program aimed at improving production practices among operative workers. Using a difference-in-differences approach on shift-level data from 2000 to 2002, I estimate the effects of the training on productivity and output per worker, with a focus on shifts where middle managers are absent. I find that the training program mitigates the disruption caused by management absenteeism, increasing productivity and output by 10% to 20% in shifts affected by middle manager absences. This paper contributes to the literature studying training in firms by demonstrating the critical role of middle managers in low-skilled environments and the potential of targeted training programs to reduce disruptions arising from their absences.
The Impact of Industrial Electricity Prices on Employment and Firms Across Sectors Link
Abstract: This paper examines the effects of industrial electricity prices on employment and number of active firms in the manufacturing, services and primary sectors. For identification, I exploit a wave of electricity market deregulation reforms enacted in 21 US states in 2000 and that counties have different shares of coal in their electricity mix. I use an Instrumental Variable (IV) identification strategy and find that a 1% increase in industrial electricity prices reduces manufacturing employment by 0.43% and the number of manufacturing firms by 0.44%, with positive but not statistically significant effects in the service and primary sectors. Assuming a Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) production function, electricity and labor are complements in the service sector. Conversely, I find that in the manufacturing sector, I cannot reject the hypothesis that the underlying production function is a Cobb-Douglas.
Early Work in Progress
Co-Worker Absences and Career Development: Evidence from Registry Data
Chronic Diseases and Labor Outcomes: The role of Social Networks