Why do young adults migrate? This paper studies the reasons behind migration choices of young, highly educated individuals from lagging-behind regions. I collect a rich dataset on subjective expectations at the time when respondents are making their choice of whether to migrate out of Andalusia, one of the poorest regions of Spain. I then use the data to estimate a life-cycle model of migration choice, taking migration duration into account. Crucially, the collected data allow me to separate preferences from beliefs and to distinguish between pecuniary and nonpecuniary factors. Regarding pecuniary factors, I find that migration decisions are more sensitive to earnings, followed by the prospects of full-time employment and a better match between studies and job. Although there is sorting on expected labor market outcomes, my results show that the set of nonpecuniary factors, such as being close to family and quality of social life, play a larger role in choosing whether to migrate. Given the large expected likelihood of short-term migration, I study the reasons for planning to migrate temporarily. Counterfactual exercises show that a human capital acquisition strategy plays a small role on the plan to migrate short-term. Instead, expected short-term migration is largely motivated by preferences for nonpecuniary outcomes.

Presented at: SAEe (Valencia, December 2022), SOLE (Philadelphia, May 2023), BSE Summer Forum (Barcelona, June 2023), Workshop on Subjective Expectations (Bocconi-Milan, June 2023), Workshop on Migration and Family Economics (IESEG-Paris, June 2023), EEA-ESEM (Barcelona, August 2023), EALE (Prague, September 2023), WB-IDB HUMANS Seminar (Washington, March 2024), CUNEF Universidad (Madrid, April 2024)

with Nagore Iriberri

We study the evolution of gender gaps, both in terms of representation and research output, among cohorts of scholars in economics over the past 9 decades (1933-2019) using a sample of economists who have published at least once in any of the 36 high impact journals (Card et al., 2022). With respect to representation, there has been a clear increase of the female share among scholars, but we find evidence of both vertical segregation based on prominence and horizontal segregation based on research fields. With respect to gender gaps in output, women publish fewer articles than men, and more concerningly, the negative gender gap showed no sign of convergence since the 1940s, although there is substantial heterogeneity in the type of publication. The negative gender gap in publications is mostly explained by women having shorter active academic careers.

with Josep Amer-Mestre and Marta C. Lopes - Applied Economics (2023). DOI:10.1080/00036846.2023.2167924

We study the impact of COVID-19 school closures on differences in online learning usage by regional academic performance. Using data from Google Trends in Italy, we find that during the first lockdown, regions with a previously lower academic performance increased their searches for e-learning tools more than higher-performing regions. Analysing school administrative and survey data before the pandemic, we find that both teachers and students in lower performing regions were using no less e-learning tools than higher performing ones. These two findings suggest that the COVID-19 shock widened the e-learning usage gap between academically lower and higher-performing regions. Exploiting the regional variation in school closure mandates during the 2020/2021 academic year, we report that the patterns detected after the first lockdown were no longer present. Regions with different previous academic performance had the same response in terms of online learning usage when faced with stricter school closures.