POLITICAL ECONOMY
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Who turns out to vote? A fresh look to an old question, joint with G. Bellettini, C. Berti-Ceroni, G. Prarolo, and C. Monfardini (accepted). Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization.
Abstract: Exploiting a unique individual-level administrative dataset over 12 years in a large municipality in northern Italy, this paper investigates the impact of income shocks and personal exposure to ethnic diversity in one's residential dwelling on electoral turnout. A large positive income shocks increases turnout only among the poor. For instance, it reduces by one third the turnout gap between eligible voters in the bottom and the top of the income distribution. On the contrary, both adverse income and diversity shocks tend to dampen turnout. The estimates are larger at the lower tail of the income distribution, where a large negative income shock reduces turnout by 7.9 percent, and among poor elderly people even by 13.5 percent. Moreover, the entry of a populist party induces a relative increase (decrease) in turnout among the poorer (richer) who suffered an income loss.
Abstract: We assemble a comprehensive dataset covering a large set of old and new democracies over four decades to document the dynamics of rulers alternating in office. We construct a measure of the tenure accumulated in office by the ruling party (or a coalition of parties) since the establishment of a democracy. Our measure reveals a large variation in the political tenure of rulers alternating in office and uncovers an important fiscal effect of political tenure. A ten percent increase in tenure rises government expenditure, measured as percentage of GDP, of 0.23 percentage points, and deficit of 0.21 percentage points over the period 1972-2014. We outline a conceptual framework that accounts for the uncovered empirical relationship and suggest the relevance of a fading 'honeymoon effect", which revisits Olson (1984) argument on the dynamic effect of distributional coalitions. The older the ruling group, the more divisive the available policies that can be implemented, which require costly transfers in the form of public expenditure to keep the group together.
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Negative Advertising and Political Competition, joint with A. Gandhi and C. Urban, 2016, The Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Volume 32 (3).
Abstract: Why is negative advertising such a prominent feature of competition in the US political market? We hypothesize that two-candidate races provide stronger incentives for going negative relative to non-duopoly contests: when the num- ber of competitors is greater than two, airing negative ads creates positive ex- ternalities for opponents that are not the object of the attack. To investigate the empirical relevance of the fewness of competitors in explaining the volume of negative advertising, we exploit variation in the number of entrants running for US non-presidential primaries from 2000 through 2008. Duopolies are over twice as likely to air a negative ad when compared to non-duopolies, and the tendency for negative advertising decreases in the number of competitors. The estimates are robust to various specification checks and the inclusion of potential confounding factors at the race, candidate, and advertisement levels.
Winner of the 2016 Oliver E. Williamson Prize for Best Article in JLEO
Selected Press Reactions: LSE US Centre Coverage, Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg, Northwest Herald, Hartford Courant
HEALTH ECONOMICS
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Health Outcomes, Personality Traits and Eating Disorders, joint with J. Ham and M. Sovinski, 2021. Economic Policy, Volume 36(105)
Abstract: Bulimia Nervosa (BN) is a detrimental persistent eating disorder that impacts millions of women, and imposes serious costs on the economy in terms of physicalhealth, treatment costs, absence from work, and reduced human capital accumulation. One important issue in treating BN is that it is often undiagnosed, especially among disadvan-taged girls. The failures to diagnose BN occur, in part, because many cases of BN are unobservable to others, and asking girls about their bingeing and purging behavior can be considered invasive. Using data on eating disorder behaviors from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study, we show that information on a girl's per-sonality traits, along with information on her family' s socioeconomic status, can be used to impute the unobservable BN behavior. In particular, we find that personality traits are significant determinants of bulimic behavior, even after controlling for socioeconomic status. These results suggest a way to target those who are likely to suffer from BN based on identifiable personality traits. Given the costs involved in BN, and the number of individuals affected, our research suggests a practical direction for public health policy in order to reducethe number of undiagnosed cases.
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Weight, Reference Points and the Onset of Eating Disorders, joint with T. Arduini and E. Patacchini, 2019, Journal of Health Economics, Volume 65.
Abstract: We investigate whether the development of eating disorders, in the form of purging, is influenced by peers’ body size through interpersonal comparisons. Using detailed information on recent cohorts of U.S. teenagers, we document a sizeable and significant negative effect of high school peers’ body mass index (BMI) on purging behavior during the adolescence for females, but not for males. Interpersonal comparisons operate through the formation of a distorted self-perception: teenage girls with relatively thin female peers perceive themselves as heavier than they actually are. The girls who are more susceptible to peer influences are those having peers who are thinner, more popular, more (verbally) able, and with more educated parents.
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Disparities in Bulimia Nervosa: Who is left behind?, joint with J.Ham and M. Sovinski, 2015, Economics Letters, Volume 136.
Abstract: Bulimia nervosa is a serious eating disorder affecting a large number of female teenagers. We find substantial income and racial disparities in the treatment of Bulimia. Specifically, Blacks and girls from low income families are more likely to exhibit bulimic behavior than Whites and girls from high income families, but Whites and girls from high income families are much more likely to be diagnosed with an eating disorder.
Selected Press Reactions: Chicago Sun-Times, The Guardian, Science Update a radio feature for Science, Teen Vogue
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Caught in the Bulimic Trap? Persistence and State Dependence of Bulimia Among Young Women, joint with J. Ham and M. Sovinski, 2013, Journal of Human Resources, Volume 48(3).
Abstract: Bulimia nervosa (BN) is a growing health concern and its consequences are especially serious given the compulsive nature of the disorder. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying the persistent nature of BN. Using data from the NHLBI Growth and Health Study and instrumental variable techniques, we document that unobserved heterogeneity plays a role in the persistence of BN, but up to two-thirds of it is due to state dependence. Our findings suggest that the timing of policy is crucial: Preventive educational programs should be coupled with more intense (rehabilitation) treatment at the early stages of the BN behaviors.
Abstract: We explore learning about HIV infection odds from risky sex as a new mechanism explaining the Sub-Saharan Africa HIV epidemic. Our novel empirical evidence reveals a U-shaped relationship between education and being HIV positive across epidemic stages, which prompts the idea of asymmetric learning: more educated individuals potentially learn faster and update their (latent) beliefs about infection odds more accurately than less educated individuals, inducing earlier sexual behavioral change among the more educated. Our nonstationary model incorporates three HIV epidemic stages, chronologically: a myopic stage where agents are unaware of how risky sex causes infections, a learning stage where agents update beliefs on infection odds, and an ARV stage reflecting treatment introduction. Anchored in the micro evidence -explaining the HIV-education gradient- we find that our learning mechanism is powerful: a 5-year earlier learning reduces new AIDS deaths by almost 45%, and a 10-year earlier learning results in a 60% drop.
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The Unequal Battle against Infertility: Theory and Evidence from IVF Success and Drop-out, joint with F. Groes, A. Houstecka, and R. Santaeulalia-Llopis (2024), CEPR Discussion Paper DP18766.
Abstract: Using Danish administrative data, we show that IVF success is associated with maternal education: College-educated women have a 9% higher live birth chance than high school-educated women and 25% higher than dropouts. We exclude infertility causes, health, clinics, finances, and partner attributes as drivers. Instead, we focus on latent factors like ability and psychological traits. First, we show how proxies for these factors like Grade Point Average (GPA) shape IVF success. Second, we build a dynamic model of post-IVF-failure dropout where women differ in latent ability and psychological costs. Our model counterfactuals imply that ability explains 87% of the education gradient in IVF success, prompting a policy discussion.
We examine whether adolescents’ height relative to their peers has lasting effects on labor-market outcomes. Using longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we show that being one inch shorter than the tallest classmate is associated with approximately 1.5% lower earnings for males, implying a wage penalty of about 7.5% for a five-inch gap, but not for females. This finding is stable across career stages and remains robust to controls for proxies for ability, poligenic score of educational attainment, month of birth, and a rich set of individual and contextual characteristics. We provide evidence that interpersonal height comparisons shape both psychological and social experiences in adolescence: taller students report greater social embeddedness, feeling closer to peers, more integrated into the school community, and perceiving the social environment as less hostile, which in turn predicts higher earnings in adulthood.
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Being in the Grip of Bulimia: New Evidence on how Bulimia Relates to Addictive Behavior, joint with M. Sovinski, 2023, Journal of Obesity and Overweight
Abstract: Using longitudinal data that tracks bulimic behavior among young girls (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study), we examine (1) whether bulimic behavior is consistent with addiction criteria as stated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV (APA, 1994); and 2) whether the persistence in bulimia nervosa (BN) reflects tolerance formed from an addiction or if it can be attributed to slow learning about the deleterious health effects of BN. Making the case for treating BN as an addiction has important policy implications. First, it suggests that the timing of educational policy and treatment is crucial: preventive educational programs aimed at instructing girls about the deleterious health effects of BN, as well as treatment interventions, will be most effective if provided in the early stages. Second, it would put those exhibiting BN on more equal footing (from a treatment reimbursement perspective) with individuals with drug or alcohol addictions.
HUMAN CAPITAL
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Parental investments and engagement: New measures from a parental time app, joint with M. Bigoni, S. Bortolotti, M. Fort, A. Guarini, C. Monfardini, A. Sansavini, D. Sansone, C. Suttora (2025), Review of Economics of the Household.
Abstract: We introduce a new app that collects 24-hour parental time diaries. To assess its validity, we leverage data from a sample of more than 500 parents with pre-school aged children. Our findings show that our tool is reliable and delivers high-quality data. By exploiting contextual information on the child's involvement and feelings during each activity performed with the parent, we construct new measures of parental investments that capture the quality of daily parent-child interactions. We analyse how these novel measures relate to alternative definitions and discuss the potential advantages of the adoption of our approach to time-use measurement in the rapidly growing field of research on the role of parental investments in child development.
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Mindful Parenting Intervention MinUTo App for Parents of Preschool Children: Study Protocol of a Radomised Control Trial, joint with A. Guarini, A. Sansavini, C. Suttora, S. Bortolotti, M. Fort, C. Monfardini, M. Bigoni (2022). International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Volume 19 no.7564
MinUTo Intervention website, Workshop on Early Education March 2024
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Parental beliefs, behaviours and time-use investments towards pre-schoolers, joint with M. Fort, M. Bigoni, C. Monfardini, A. Guarini, A. Sansavini, R. Caputo, S. Bortolotti, C. Suttora (2023), under review.
Abstract: Parental time investments and parenting styles are aspects of parenting that can have important effects on child development in the early years; yet, we have limited knowledge about their determinants. This paper reports on the development and initial validation of a parental beliefs survey, aimed at measuring general parental beliefs. The survey focuses explicitly on parental time investments in preschoolers and takes into account the differential role of the type of activity performed, as well as the role of parental engagement with the child. Using two distinct samples from the same population, we demonstrate that the parental belief indicators we propose have good internal validity and consistency. Most importantly, they correlate in the expected direction with parental behavior, specifically the time parents spend with the child
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The Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting Scale: Psychometrics Proprieties of the Italian Version (accepted), joint with A. Guarini, L. Menabò, M. Bigoni, S. Bortolotti, M. Fort, C. Monfardini, L. G. Duncan, A. Sansavini, C. Suttora. Mindfulness
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The Comprehensive Early Childhood Parenting Questionnaire – Italian version (CECPAQ-IT): Factor Structure, Reliability, and Validity” (2025), joint with A. Sansavini, M. Verhoven, C. Suttora, M. Bigoni, S. Bortolotti, M. Fort, C. Monfardini, A. Van Baar, A. Guarini. Parenting: Science and Practice
