Research
Working Papers
"Welfare Effects of Income Tax Reform and Tax Evasion: Evidence from Chile" (with Sebastian Castillo). [PDF]
Different tax evasion possibilities in occupations affect agents' employment decisions with welfare implications, being critical elements for accurately measuring the welfare consequences of tax changes. In the context of progressive piecewise tax schemes and tax evasion, this paper studies the welfare effects of tax changes incorporating those elements previously omitted in the literature. We model an economy with occupational decisions and a piecewise progressive tax scheme, where self-employed can bunch at the income bracket threshold, declaring less income to face a smaller marginal tax rate than they owe. Later, we characterize the welfare effect of tax change, allowing for evasion, occupational decisions, and introducing frictions originating from the tax system characteristics, particularly bunching. Those elements produce a divergence with the elasticity of taxable income or total earned income. We propose a new metric to estimate the marginal change in welfare based on a trapezoid, complementing the traditional Herberger's triangle measure. Considering a tax reform in Chile, we estimate the welfare change of this reform, demonstrating the relevance of incorporating occupational decisions and tax evasion for welfare measurement.
Presented at the IIPF Annual Conference 2024, the LACEA-LAMES Annual Meeting 2021, and the XV RIDGE Workshop on Public Economics 2022.
"Tax Evasion and Employment Decisions in a Developing Economy" (with Sebastian Castillo). [PDF]
This paper studies the causal effect of income tax evasion opportunities on the self-employment decision. Two peculiarities of the Chilean tax scheme enable us to identify this effect. First, it levies self-employed and wage-earners with equal marginal tax rates, eliminating the differential tax effect. Thus, we disentangle two channels through an occupational choice model: taxable income and evasion. Second, we exploit a tax reform that exogenously affects agents' evasion decisions. Following a consumption-based approach, we obtain a tax evasion measure and estimate two behavioral parameters: (i) the evasion elasticity to marginal tax rate equals 1.4; (ii) an increase of 1 percentage point in the evasion opportunity raises the probability of being self-employed by 6.1 percentage points, with a semi-elasticity of 0.16. The evasion opportunity is a crucial determinant of the self-employment response to the policy change, mainly driven by agents' behavior near the first income bracket. While women-headed households ' evasion behavior is less sensitive to a tax change, having higher education primarily drives this behavior.
Presented at the Economics of Informality Conference 2022, FIT Workshop, Helsinki GSE, IIPF Annual Conference 2022, LACEA-LAMES Annual Meeting 2023 & 2021, M-NEW Annual Workshop 2023, XIII RIDGE Workshop on Labor 2021, SECHI Annual Meeting 2022, PUC Chile 2021, Universitat de les Illes Balears 2022.
"The Effect of Exports on Labor Informality: Evidence from Argentina". [PDF]
CentER Discussion Paper; Vol. 2019-003. Tilburg: CentER, Center for Economic Research
This paper explores the causal impact of exports on the share of informal labor in the Argentinean manufacturing sector. Using an instrumental variable approach to address potential endogeneity concerns, I show that an exogenous 10 percentage points increase in export intensity induces a reduction of the informality rate of 2.2 percentage points. Both sales to high-income countries and an increase in the complexity of the performed tasks in the job explain this effect. Overall, the evidence suggests that an increase in the demand for higher-quality exports increases the manufacturing industries' productivity by reducing their share of informal workers.
Presented at LACEA-LAMES Annual Meeting 2017, BCDE 2020, European University Institute 2017, IAAE Annual Conference 2018, IZA Workshop: Labor and Development 2017, Jobs and Development Conference 2021, SECHI Annual Meeting 2018, Tilburg University 2017, and University of Antwerp 2018.
"Identifying Poor Children: Understanding the Differences Between Poverty Approaches" (with Anaïs Dangeot).
Poverty measurement is crucial to be able to identify the most vulnerable children. This study aims to explain to what extent and under which conditions monetary, subjective, and child multidimensional poverty approaches identify the same children as poor. When measuring poverty, children are often not distinguished from the other household members. However, children's experiences of poverty may be significantly different from adults. Using national representative individual micro-data from the 2015 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey (LCMS) for Zambia, we show that many characteristics of the child and the household significantly affect the probability of a joint identification of the child as poor according to the different poverty measures. The analysis reveals that 19.6% of children are identified as poor irrespective of the poverty measure adopted. The extent of this overlap varies significantly at the sub-national level.
Presented at the IARIW-World Bank Conference: New Approaches to Defining and Measuring Poverty In A Growing World 2019, ISCI Conference 2019, ISQOLS Virtual Conference 2020, and The Sustainable Development Goals in Global Perspective Conference (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, 2018).
Academic Publications
"Multidimensional child poverty analyses and child-sensitive social protection" (with C. de Neubourg, L. Bonn, V. Cebotari, A. Dangeot, E. Elezaj, M. Isaurralde, J. Karpati and N. Ramful). [PDF]
Policy in Focus, The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth, Vol. 15, Issue No. 3, pp. 13-16, 2018.
"Un Análisis Multidimensional de la Pobreza: Evidencia Reciente de las Regiones de Argentina" (with Carolina López). [PDF]
Revista de Economía Política de Buenos Aires, Vol. 12, pp. 9-44, 2012.
Policy Publications
"Multidimensional Child Poverty in Suriname" (with C. de Neubourg, L. Boon, and C. Van Damme).
SPRI Global and UNICEF Suriname, Paramaribo: Suriname, October 2022 (Forthcoming).
"Multidimensional Child Poverty in Liberia" (with C. de Neubourg, L. Boon, and N. Ramful).
UNICEF Liberia, October 2021 (Forthcoming).
"The Socio-economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Children and Women in Liberia" (with C. de Neubourg, L. Boon, N. Ramful, and M. Carrera).
UNICEF Liberia, May 2021 (Forthcoming).
"Primary and Secondary Impacts of COVID-19 on Children and Women in Ghana". [PDF]
COVID-19 Impacts on Children, UNICEF Ghana, Issue 2, February 2021.
"Risks Facing Children and Women during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Liberia" (with C. de Neubourg, L. Boon, N. Ramful, S. Satriana, and N. Neijhoft).
UNICEF Liberia, 2020 (Forthcoming).
"Primary and Secondary Impacts of COVID-19 on Children and Women in Ghana". [PDF]
COVID-19 Impacts on Children, UNICEF Ghana, Issue 1, November 2020.
"Characteristics of Individuals with Disabilities in Palestine: An Analytical Study based on the Population, Housing and Establishments Census 2007, 2017" (with C. de Neubourg and J. Karpati). [PDF]
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Ramallah - Palestine, 2020.
"Multidimensional Child Poverty Analysis in WCAR" (with C. de Neubourg, L. Bonn, A. Dangeot and A. Bakouan).
UNICEF WCAR, 2019 (Forthcoming).
"Measuring Progress on Child Wellbeing in Lao PDR" (with L. Boon, J. Karpati, and C. de Neubourg). [PDF]
Vientiane: UNICEF Lao, 2018.
"Childhood in Angola. A Multidimensional Analysis of Child Poverty" (with C. de Neubourg and A. Dangeot). [English][Portuguese]
INE and UNICEF Angola, 2018.
"Child Poverty in Zambia. A Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis" (with C. de Neubourg). [PDF]
Ministry of National Development Planning, Republic of Zambia, July 2018.
"Wellbeing of Children in Kosovo. Poverty and Deprivation among Children using the Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis (MODA)'' (with C. de Neubourg, E. de Neubourg, C. Felix, V. Reboul and J. Karpati). [PDF]
UNICEF Kosovo, 2015.