Research
Job Market Paper
Gender Norms, Social Pressure, and the Gender Gap in Turnout: Evidence from Swiss Elections [Draft available soon]
With Felix Schönenberger
Click to view abstract
We provide quasi-experimental evidence that conservative gender norms depress women's electoral participation through social pressure. Using the municipality-level "no" vote shares against the introduction of women's suffrage in Switzerland's 1971 referendum as a direct measure of conservative local gender norms, we document a norm-induced gender turnout gap with women voting at lower rates than men as local gender norms become more conservative. To isolate the role of social pressure, we exploit the staggered introduction of postal voting across cantons, which allowed voters to cast their ballots without being observed at the polling station. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that postal voting reduces the norm-induced gender turnout gap by 80–90%. The closure occurs immediately after postal voting becomes available and is driven entirely by increased turnout among women in gender-conservative municipalities. The effect is concentrated in municipalities where a majority opposed women's suffrage and is stronger in smaller communities, where social monitoring is more intense. The results cannot be explained by differential voting costs related to household responsibilities or education. Our findings show that conservative social norms can sustain gender inequalities in political participation long after formal barriers to voting have been removed.Work in Progress
Confidence of Job Market Candidates: Is There a Gender Gap? [Draft available soon]
With Patricia Funk and Raffaella Intinghero
Click to view abstract
This is the first large-scale study on gender differences in confidence among Economics job market candidates. We collected data from six job market seasons (2019/2020 – 2024/2025), based on the top 100 Economics departments according to QS World University Rankings. Where available, we downloaded CVs and job market papers (JMPs hereafter). The basis for measuring confidence is the JMPs of the job market candidates. We apply text analysis to the JMPs using two approaches: first, a Bag of Words model, where we count hedging and booster words, as well as the use of first-person pronouns, and second, a large language model (GPT-5), where we use different prompts to elicit scientific uncertainty. We document that there are significant gender differences in the way the JMPs are written: female JMPs are written in a less confident way than male JMPs. In a complementary experiment, we show that papers written in a less confident tone are perceived as being of significantly lower quality.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 the VisitINPS Fellowship (2024)
Click to view abstract
Tourism, a rapidly expanding service sector, offers a unique laboratory for studying the distributional effects of shocks to service-sector demand. We exploit the expansion of international tourism in Italy between 2003 and 2019, combining matched employer-employee data from INPS with a shift-share instrument based on outbound tourist flows by country of origin, and find that tourism exposure has little average effect on cumulative earnings but generates substantial redistribution across groups. Among incumbent workers, women gain disproportionately - about three times as much as men - with gains extending to migrant women. Gains reflect both more years worked and higher annual earnings, are concentrated among baseline tourism workers, and spill over into adjacent sectors. Men are largely unaffected. Among new labor-market entrants, effects are small but span different sectors and again favor women.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)
Click to view abstract
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.Other Publications
Le giovani donne
With Paola Profeta
Book chapter. Rapporto Giovani 2022, il Mulino (2022)