Research
Publications
Who Cares About Childcare? Covid-19 and Gender Differences in Local Public Spending (with Paola Profeta and Giulia Savio) - International Tax and Public Finance (2025)
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The Covid-19 pandemic increased the salience of childcare and focused attention on the allocation of public funds for it. Focusing on Italy, one of the first countries severely impacted by the Covid-19 crisis, we analyze how male and female politicians responded to the Covid-19 pandemic in the allocation of funds to childcare. To assess causality, we analyze close mixed-gender races in Italian local elections in small municipalities without gender quotas from 2016 to 2023. Our findings show that pre Covid-19 female mayors spent more on childcare than male mayors. However, during the pandemic, the gender gap closed, as male mayors increased spending, a trend that continued in the post pandemic period.Work in Progress
Gender Norms, Social Pressure, and the Gender Gap in Turnout: Evidence from Swiss Elections (with Felix Schönenberger)
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Turnout gaps may arise from hidden barriers rather than from differences in preferences, limiting the effective scope of universal suffrage. This study examines the role of gender norms and social pressure in shaping the gender gap in voter turnout in Switzerland. A triple-difference design exploits three sources of variation: the 1971 referendum on female suffrage to measure local norms, gendered differences in turnout, and the staggered introduction of postal voting between 1978 and 2005, which reduced the observability of voting. Before postal voting, women in municipalities with more regressive norms voted significantly less, producing a wider gender gap. This gap decreases by approximately 80% when voting becomes less observable, due to higher turnout among women and lower turnout among men in regressive areas. These findings demonstrate that turnout gaps are not merely preference-based but stem from external constraints, and that reducing observability through institutional reform can weaken social pressure, enhance representation, and strengthen universal suffrage.Women and Mandatory Military Service
Gender Gaps and The Rise of The Service Economy: Evidence From Tourism Expansion in Italy (with Francesca Baronchelli, Giuseppe Di Giacomo and Giovanni Pica) - Awarded with the VisitINPS Fellowship 2024