Working Papers
"Reverse Revolving Doors: The Influence of Interest Groups on Legislative Voting" with Miguel Alquézar-Yus [Coverage: ProMarket]
Under review
This paper investigates to which extent legislators with a background in an interest group (i.e., reverse revolvers) influence other legislators’ voting behavior. To answer this question, we collect novel data containing the universe of votes cast at the European Parliament between 2004 and 2019 and characterize legislators by their former working experience. Using the alphabetic allocation of seats, we find that seating beside reverse revolvers when the motion is relevant to their former interest groups increases co-voting by 2.4%, attendance by 1.3%, and decreases abstention by 9%. We find no influence on non-relevant ballots. These effects are driven by budget-related motions and interest groups with limited lobbying spending. Our results show that the revolving doors influence the political process when working in reverse.
"Gender Differences in Early Occupational Choices: Evidence from Medical Specialty Selection" with Agnès Charpin, Noémi Berlin, Magali Dumontet
Revise and resubmit Journal of Labor Economics
This paper analyses gender differences in occupational choices in a setting in which observed matches are solely determined by supply-side factors: the French centralised medical residency selection mechanism. We show that men and women facing the same occupational choice set make drastically different occupational choices. Medical specialties selected by women pay less, have lower time requirements, and are less competitive. To understand these differences and estimate how much of the gender gap in specialty sorting can be explained by individual preferences for job attributes, we administer a survey to prospective medical residents just before their specialty choice. Using both a hypothetical job choice framework and stated preferences, we show that while “hard” job characteristics (earnings, time requirements) only slightly reduce the gender gap in sorting, “soft” characteristics (daily tasks, contact with patients, willingness to help others) play a larger role in reducing the gap. We also find suggestive evidence of an anticipation effect of fertility on women’s career choices. Our results suggest that individual preferences play a determinant role in explaining gender-based occupational segregation.
"The Effect of School Closures on Students' Academic Performance" with Sara Flisi
Under review
This paper disentangles the academic effects of online learning mandates on high school students from the overall effect of the pandemic. We exploit exogenous variation in 2020/2021 Italian schooling mandates that imposed online learning on upper secondary school students while preserving in-person teaching for lower grades. Relying on students’ performance on standardized tests, we implement a matched DiD strategy comparing grade 13 and grade 8 students before and after the introduction of the online learning mandates. We find that, on average, in 2021 students who were subject to online learning in the 2020/2021 school year (i.e. grade 13 students) performed 0.25 and 0.15 standard deviations worse in reading and mathematics, respectively, than those who were taught in person (i.e. grade 8 students), corresponding to 75 and 45% of the expected yearly learning gain. The negative effects of attending online lessons account for roughly three-fifths and one-third of the overall estimated pandemic effects in reading and mathematics, respectively. Similar drops in test performance are found for the 2022 and 2023 cohorts, subject to the online mandates one and two years before being tested, respectively. On average, girls do better than boys, and no significant difference is detected in 2021 between natives and non-natives. Responses to teacher questionnaires show that a significantly high share of teachers teaching online struggled to motivate students and prepare their lessons compared to those with in-presence teaching.
Work in Progress
"The Effects of Temporary Confiscation of Vacant Housing" with Lorenzo Neri
High vacancy rates in tight housing markets are perceived by policymakers and society at large as a market failure that calls for government intervention. We study the effect of a policy passed in the Balearic Islands (Spain) that dictated the temporary confiscation of vacant properties, unless they are put on the market. Using a synthetic difference-in-differences strategy, we show that following the policy announcement, house prices increase while rents temporarily decrease before reverting back to pre-policy levels. This suggests that while supply effects dominate in the rental market, the sale market experiences an increase in prices. This is potentially due to a combination of an 'amenity effect' - i.e., the removal of the disamenity imposed by vacant properties on nearby housing - and a regulation effect, whereby imposing an implicit tax on vacant housing dampens private housing investments.
Publications
''E-learning Engagement Gap During School Closures: Differences by Academic Performance" with Alaitz Ayarza-Astigarraga and Marta C. Lopes, Applied Economics, 2023, Vol. 56 (3): 337-359
We study the impact of COVID-19 school closures on differences in online learning usage by regional academic performance. Using data from Google Trends in Italy, we find that during the first lockdown, regions with a previously lower academic performance increased their searches for e-learning tools more than higher-performing regions. Analysing school administrative and survey data before the pandemic, we find that both teachers and students in lower-performing regions were using no fewer e-learning tools than higher-performing ones. These two findings suggest that the COVID-19 shock widened the e-learning usage gap between academically lower and higher-performing regions. Exploiting the regional variation in school closure mandates during the 2020-2021 academic year, we report that the patterns detected after the first lockdown were no longer present. Regions with different previous academic performance had the same response in terms of online learning usage when faced with stricter school closures.