Published Papers

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• The Asymmetric Gender Effects of High Flyers (with R. Fernàndez and E. Patacchini) (2022). Labour Economics 79: 102287. Link to Paper

Using longitudinal information on a representative sample of U.S. students, we study the effects of exposure to female and male "high flyers" in high school. We identify a causal effect by exploiting quasi-random variation to peers with highly-educated parents across grades within a school. Greater exposure to male high flyers decreases the likelihood that women obtain a bachelor's degree, lowers their math and science grades, decreases their LFP and increases fertility. They show lower levels of self-confidence/aspirations. The effects are found for girls with below median ability and for those with at least one college-educated parent. There are no effects of high flyers of either gender on boys.

Media Coverage: MarketWatch, Research Minutes Podcast

(This Paper was previously released as NBER Working Paper No. 25763 under the title "Girls, Boys, and High Achievers." Link to NBER Paper)

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• Parents, Infants, and Voter Turnout: Evidence from the United States (2022). Quarterly Journal of Political Science 17(1): 91-119. Link to Paper, Working Paper Version

Despite evidence that infants affect families' economic and social behaviors, little is known about how young children influence their parents' political engagement. I show that U.S. women with an infant during an election year are 3.5 percentage points less likely to vote than women without children; men with an infant are 2.2 percentage points less likely to vote. Suggesting that this effect may be causal, I find no significant decreases in turnout the year before parents have an infant. Using a triple-difference approach, I then show that universal vote-by-mail systems mitigate the negative association between infants and mothers' turnout.

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• The Brother Earnings Penalty (with E. Patacchini) (2019). Labour Economics 58: 37-51. Link to Paper

        Media Coverage: The Independent

This paper examines the impact of sibling gender on adolescent experiences and adult labor market outcomes for a recent cohort of U.S. women. We document an earnings penalty from the presence of a younger brother (relative to a younger sister), finding that a next-youngest brother reduces adult earnings by about 7%. Using rich data on parent-child interactions, parents’ expectations, disruptive behaviors, and adult outcomes, we provide a first step at examining the mechanisms behind this result. We find that brothers reduce parents’ expectations and school monitoring of female children while also increasing females’ propensity to engage in more traditionally feminine tasks. These factors help explain a portion of the labor market penalty from brothers.

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Book Chapters

 

• Peer Effects in Education (with E. Patacchini) (2021). The Routledge Handbook of the Economics of Education, pp. 253-275. Link to Chapter

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Working Papers 

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• Birth order in the very long-run: Estimating first-born premiums between 1850 and 1940 (with J. Grooms, K. Karbownik, J. Price, S. O’Keefe, and A. Wray). NBER Working Paper No. 32407. Link to Paper

The nineteenth-century American family experienced tremendous demographic, economic, and institutional changes. By using birth order effects as a proxy for family environment, and linked census data on men born between 1835 and 1910, we study how the family's role in human capital production evolved over this period. We find firstborn premiums for occupational outcomes, marriage, and fertility that are similar across census waves. Our results indicate that the returns to investments in the family environment were stable over a long period.​

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Resilience of Faith: The Effect of Religious Regulations during and after the Covid-19 pandemic  (with C. Esparza and J. Park) Link to Paper
How do religious rules and regulations affect behavior? We examine this question​​ using changes in Catholic regulations during the Covid-19 pandemic combined with mobility data from 15 million smartphone users from 2019-2022. We first document overall trends: total religious attendance declined sharply in March
2020 and thereafter recovered slowly and more gradually than other activities like restaurant visits. There were also variations across religious groups, with Catholics returning at a slower pace than Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. We then introduce a novel approach to examine the impact of religious policies on behavior, leveraging variations in the timing of dispensation rescissions (requirements for Sunday attendance) by US Catholic bishops. Using a difference-in-differences event study model, we find a short-term 2-4 percentage point increase in Catholic weekend church attendance following the lifting of dispensations, compared to the 2019 baseline. However, this effect fades over time and is smaller than the attendance surge seen after reopening churches post-lockdowns. These results suggest that religious policies impact behavior, though their effects may be transient.

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• Faith and Philanthropy: Megachurch Scandals and Charitable Giving Link to Paper 

While religious institutions receive the plurality of U.S. charitable contributions, it is unclear whether their actions affect the total size of the charitable sector or (simply) the allocation of donations. I examine the impact of negative religious shocks on giving using a newly constructed database of megachurch scandals combined with itemized contributions data from the Internal Revenue Service. I find that religious leaders’ actions affect total giving: a scandal decreases local itemized contributions by 1.9 percent ($10 million) per year for at least three years. Contributions to secular local charities are unaffected, suggesting limited substitution between religious and secular philanthropy.

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Work in Progress​

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• Occupational Segregation, Gender and Career Choices (with G. Olivero, E. Patacchini and N. Szembrot)

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