Using original survey data on subjective expectations, I study how highly educated young adults from lagging regions evaluate no migration, short-term migration, and long-term migration. First, I show that individuals anticipate sharp trade-offs: long-term migration delivers the highest career gains but large non-career losses, while no migration offers strong non-career advantages but weak career prospects. I then embed these expectations in a life-cycle utility model and perform counterfactual exercises. Results show that differences in expected non-career outcomes have larger effects on intended migration paths. Expected career improvements in the home region upon return are not perceived to be large enough to meaningfully influence the choice of short-term migration. Finally, I use the estimated preferences to assess policies that encourage short-term migration by guaranteeing better career prospects after return. These policies have stronger effects on those planning long-term migration than on those planning no migration. Matching these effects with cash transfers requires large payments and produces lower welfare among switchers. A follow-up survey four years later validates the expectations data by showing that expectations strongly predict realized migration choices and outcomes.

Presented at: 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), Jornadas de Economía Laboral (Barcelona, July 2024), CERGE-EI (Prague, December 2024)

with Nagore Iriberri. R&R at the International Economic Review

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 in 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 do, and more concerningly, the negative gender gap has shown no sign of convergence since the 1940s, although there is substantial heterogeneity in the type of publication. The negative gender gap in publications is significantly reduced when we control for the length of authors' active academic careers, as women’s careers tend to be shorter.

with Josep Amer-Mestre and Marta C. Lopes. Applied Economics (2024)

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.