We study the short- and long-run impact of motherhood on labour market outcomes and explore the individual and firm-level factors that influence it. Using matched employer-employee data for Italy over 1985-2018, through an event study methodology around childbirth, we show that the long-run...

This paper analyzes the allocation of workers to jobs and the wage distribution in Germany. Our main contribution is to reconcile prominent empirical models of wage dispersion (Abowd et al., 1999; Card et al., 2013) with theoretical sorting models (Shimer and Smith, 2000; Eeckhout and Kircher, 2011;...

How can a country improve the productivity growth in its business sector and reach its growth potential? Sweden during the 1970–2010 period can serve as an example to help other countries understand how to efficiently reform a business sector. In the 1990s, Sweden implemented a reform package...

We quantify the effect of a minimum wage on compression throughout the earnings distribution. Using the case of Brazil, which experienced a large decrease in earnings inequality while its real minimum wage increased from 1996-2012, we document that the inequality decrease was bottom-driven yet...

This paper identifies the causal effects of trade shocks on worker outcomes. We exploit a unique setting based on three pillars: (i) a large, unanticipated appreciation of the Swiss franc in 2015, (ii) detailed data with firm-level exposure to trade via output markets (both domestic and foreign)...

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic literature, and heights are related with vitamin D. Although African-Americans and whites have the genetic ability to reach similar terminal statures, 19th century blacks were consistently shorter...

Putting a limit on the duration of unemployment benefits tends to introduce a spikeʺ in the job finding rate shortly before benefits are exhausted. Current theories explain this spike from workers’ behavior. We present a theoretical model in which also the nature of the job matters....

According to Becker's (1957) famous theory on discrimination, entrepreneurs with a strong prejudice against female workers forgo profits by submitting to their tastes. In a competitive market their firms lack efficiency and are therefore forced to leave. We present new empirical evidence for...

This paper analyzes to what extent gender culture affects gender gap in employment. Drawing on Italian data, we measure culture by building two indices: one based on individual attitudes, as done in the existing literature; one based on firms' attitudes. Firms' beliefs, which express their set of...

This paper presents evidence from a field experiment, which aims to identify the two sources of worker's pro-social motivation that have been considered in the literature: action-oriented altruism and output-oriented altruism. To this end we employ an experimental design that first measures the...