"Domestic Violence Reporting during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Latin America" (with Enrique Carreras).

​

We examine how the frequency and characteristics of domestic violence reports changed after the start of the pandemic and the imposition of mobility restrictions in six Latin American countries. Using data through June 2020, we find that the pandemic’s impact on domestic violence reports varied significantly across countries, periods, types of violence, and reporting channels. 

​

​

"Helping Families Help Themselves? Gender-differential Effects of an SMS Parenting Program" (with Sofía Amaral, Lelys Dinarte and Patricio Dominguez).

​

While digital technology is widely used to address important health and social problems, there is limited knowledge about its effects in the context of parenting. Using an individual-level randomized controlled trial with 3,103 male and female caregivers of young children in El Salvador, we evaluate the impact of a free short-term digital intervention that aims to promote positive parenting and parental stress management.

​

​

"Do Women Compete like Men? Evidence from the Track" (with Samuel Berlinski).

​

We use information on middle-distance races to obtain insights on how men and women compete in gender-segregated, high-stakes settings. We document important differences in competitive behavior across genders and examine the empirical validity of different theories by estimating a model of behavior in tournaments with interim-feedback.

 

"Paying Politicians: A Semi-Structural Approach".

​

I examine how the wage paid to politicians affects citizens' decision to participate in politics and their performance in office. I estimate a political agency model to retrieve unobservable characteristics of the political environment, such as the quality of politicians and the proportion of office-motivated and intrinsic-motivated candidates. I fit the model using data on administrative efficiency in two samples of Italian municipalities on each side of an arbitrary population threshold established by law to determine a jump in mayors’ remuneration. Results show that higher wages improve candidates’ managerial ability but reduce their public service motivation. Relative to the existing empirical literature on the topic, the semi-structural approach in this paper serves to better quantify and disentangle the different mechanisms at play, providing a stronger link to the theoretical literature.

 

"Seeds and Roots of Prejudice: Lessons from Contemporary Africa" (with Alexsandros Cavgias).

​

We provide original descriptive evidence on the correlates of prejudice towards homosexuals in the African continent. We document a negative and significant relationship between material conditions and sexual prejudice. We also find a non-monotonic relationship between education and prejudice: relative to the population with no formal education, people with completed primary education display higher rates of prejudice. On the contrary, post-secondary education is associated to lower levels of prejudice. We finally test the hypothesis that exposure to Christian missions increased individual-level prejudice toward homosexuals in contemporary Africa. We find evidence against this hypothesis: exposure to missionary activity at the village level has no significant relationship with individual level prejudice toward homosexuals.

​