How is global commerce affecting the gender composition of employment? A firm-level analysis of the effects of exposure to gender norms via trade and FDI, 2025 (with Carolina Lennon and Alyssa Schneebaum), Labour Economics, 2025, Vol.94.
[Paper] [CESifo Working Paper]
Import Shocks and Gendered Labor Market Responses: Evidence from Mexico, Labour Economics, 2024, Vol.88.
[Paper] [Working Paper] [EconPol Policy Brief]
Working Papers & Work in Progress
Workplace Breastfeeding and Maternal Employment (with Elisabeth Wurm)
[new version 02/2025] [CESifo Working Paper] [Blog (German)]
Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of workplace breastfeeding laws on mothers’ labor supply. We exploit state-level laws introduced throughout 1998-2009 that require employers to provide break time and a private room for women to express milk or breastfeed. Our results show an increase in breastfeeding initiation and the probability that a child was breastfed at three and six months after birth. We find that workplace breastfeeding significantly increase maternal employment by 4% when children are in breastfeeding age. Our results highlight the importance of preferences, individual constraints, and initial labor market attachment for contextualizing the breastfeeding and employment responses.
Transmission of Gender Norms and Women's Labor Force Participation over Time NOeG Dissertation Fellowship 2021/22 & Theodor Körner Prize 2023
Abstract: What is the role of changing gender norms in the dramatic increase of married women's labor force participation over the 20th century? In this paper, I develop a model that explains the co-evolution of gender norms and female labor force participation over time. Couples decide on the wife’s labor supply based on a social norm cost both members of the household face. They learn about the true cost of women in the workforce through private intergenerational transmission of norms and the observation of the previous generation. Through these two sources of learning, the expectation of the social norm cost converges to the true, low cost. The model is calibrated with US data and matches the increase and flattening out at high levels of female labor force participation over time. I show that evolving beliefs matter for explaining the evolution of female labor force participation over time.