My main area of research is macroeconomics and labour economics. In particular, I am interested in family, demography, and quantitative macroeconomics.
Are financial incentives effective in increasing fertility rates? Empirical evidence suggests they are, primarily in the short run (around implementation). Can such policies also increase the total number of children in the long run? We address this question by using a structural life-cycle model of fertility and labor supply, calibrated to replicate the short-run effects of a cash transfer paid at childbirth implemented in 2007 in Spain. The model incorporates labor market duality, a defining feature of Spanish labor markets that negatively impacts fertility. Our calibrated model replicates a 6% increase in fertility rates in the short run but only generates a 3% rise in completed fertility over women’s lifetimes—the long run. Eliminating labor market duality increases lifetime fertility by 6.62%, but the discrepancy between short- and long-run effects of the incentive persists. These results highlight the limited impact of financial incentives alone to sustain fertility gains.
The Sex Ratio, Marriage and Bargaining: A Look at China with Qing Huang and Lintong Li Reject and Resubmit, Journal of the European Economic Association
We study marriage and time allocation decisions in the context of an increase in the sex ratio, as observed in China between 1990 and 2010. First, we document a rise in the leisure time ratio between married women and men during this period. Then we develop a model of marriage and time allocation decisions, and compare the predictive power of unitary (no bargaining) and collective versions (Egalitarian and Nash bargaining). We find that the collective model with Nash bargaining provides the best fit in terms of time allocation. To isolate the effect of changes in the sex ratio from other factors such as rising wages and increasing wage inequality, we perform a decomposition exercise. The rise in the sex ratio accounts for an additional hour and a half of weekly leisure for married women, with the opposite effect observed for men.
Why do agents consume more services relative to goods as income grows? We present a theory of structural change assuming that a representative household satisfies final needs by means of two home-production functions in time and either goods or services from the market. When calibrating the model to U.S. data, roughly half of structural change is accounted for by technological change allowing services to display a larger time saving than goods in satisfying final needs. Also, even if preferences are homothetic, the calibrated model generates endogenous income effects, which account for the remaining structural change generated by the model.
Urbanization is one of the defining features of economic development. As countries grow, workers move from rural areas into cities and from agricultural to non-agricultural employment. In many low-income countries, however, urbanization is accompanied by the emergence and persistence of slums. These informal settlements often lack secure property rights and adequate housing conditions, yet they provide an affordable entry point into urban labor markets. This paper studies the relationship between slums, occupational mobility, and economic growth. We ask whether slums merely reflect urban poverty or whether they facilitate the movement of workers from low-productivity rural agriculture into higher-productivity urban activities. Understanding this distinction is important for policy because many governments devote substantial resources to slum clearance and relocation programs. If slums serve as a stepping stone into urban labor markets, policies aimed at eliminating them may generate unintended consequences for urbanization and growth.
