The rise of work-from-home (WfH) has become a durable feature of 21st-century labor markets, raising a key question for gender equality: Is WfH a stepping stone or a stumbling block for women’s careers? While WfH could help women reconcile professional and family responsibilities, it may also slow career advancement through productivity losses and lead to stronger specialization in domestic work. To study the short- and long-run macroeconomic implications of an expansion in WfH opportunities, I develop a quantitative general-equilibrium, overlapping-generations model calibrated to pre-COVID U.S. data. Couples jointly choose their time allocation between market and domestic work, WfH adoption, and occupation. The model predicts that expanding WfH opportunities strengthens mothers’ careers in the long-run: women’s earnings growth between ages 25 and 40 increases by 7.2 percentage points, and the gender earnings gap narrows by 7.4 percent. Women benefit both from their own and their spouses’ WfH adoption as well as through re-sorting into higher-paying occupations. However, some women experience career losses when working in occupations where WfH entails high productivity penalties. At the aggregate level, welfare rises by 11.1 percent and output by 0.5 percent. Important for the current policy debate, I find short-run losses in women’s earnings from WfH adoption, as occupational choices are fixed and the expansion of WfH is large and unexpected.

📄 [ Job Market Paper ] 📄 [ CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper ]

In the United States, about 35 – 40% of all marriages end with a divorce. Yet, in our self-conducted survey among US married individuals we find that average probabilistic expectations of divorce are found to be considerably lower. In this paper we present our survey evidence and incorporate overoptimistic expectations about divorce into a household life-cycle model with endogenous accumulation of human capital and assets. We account for ex-ante heterogeneity in both spouses’ wages. Couples jointly choose their market hours, home production hours, and joint savings. We quantify the model using data from the US and show that overoptimism about marital stability leads to (1) higher within-couple specialization and (2) lower savings because overoptimistic couples do not anticipate the insurance value of human capital and assets in case of divorce. Using our survey, we validate the models testable predictions. In our model, the higher specialization of overoptimistic couples is driven by reduced market hours of the lower-wage spouse, leading to lower human capital. Overoptimism during marriage propagates beyond divorce through assets and human capital, which is particularly harmful to the less-insured, lower-wage spouse, explaining the high poverty rates of divorced single mothers. Based on paternalistic welfare, the initially higher-wage spouse potentially benefits from overoptimism. Yet, the losses of the lower-wage spouse always outweigh the partner’s gains. If all couples acted under rational expectations, the aggregate levels of hours worked, human capital, and assets in the economy would increase substantially. We evaluate two policies to mitigate the effects of overoptimism, an increase in child support and the introduction of a divorce fund that insures divorcees.

📄 [ Working Paper ] 💡[ Slides NBER Summer Institute 2025 ]

Crime shocks are frequent and disruptive, often heightening public concerns about violence and personal safety. Yet little is known about their potential long-term economic implications. This paper studies how historical exposure to crime shapes current perceptions of crime, and how these individual perceptions in turn affect the macroeconomic impacts of new crime shocks. Using cross-country survey data matched with historical crime records, we find that individuals historically exposed to high-crime years are more likely to prioritize fighting crime over other societal goals, such as maintaining a stable economy. This historical link is particularly strong among older and richer individuals, and among parents. Policies that strengthen fiscal positions and enhance the government’s capacity to respond to crime shocks help mitigate the persistence of crime exposure. At the aggregate level, countries where crime concerns are more entrenched experience larger GDP declines in the aftermath of high-crime years, driven mainly by lower consumption, capital accumulation, and productivity, rather than changes in employment.

Disclaimer: The views are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

📄 [ Working Paper ] 📄 [ IMF Working Paper ]

The United States faces record-low fertility rates amid persistently high housing costs and a constrained housing supply. One key factor aggravating this challenge might be the limited downsizing of Baby Boomers, which amplifies housing scarcity–an issue likely to intensify as demographic shifts expand the shares of individuals in their mid-30s and 60s. This paper investigates the link between low fertility and the high concentration of housing wealth among older cohorts. In the U.S. context, we document a strong association between low fertility and both, high housing concentration among the elderly and low housing supply elasticity. To quantify the role of underlying mechanisms, we develop a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility and housing decisions. The model highlights how down payment constraints, housing transaction costs, and bequest motives jointly exacerbate housing-market tensions. Liquidity constraints among young households emerge as a key driver of low housing consumption–and, consequently, low fertility–while bequest motives and transaction costs explain the limited downsizing observed among the elderly. Policy counterfactuals reveal that while moving subsidies have only minor but negative effects on fertility, reducing property taxes meaningfully lowers elderly housing concentration and raises fertility.

📄 [ Working Paper ]