Research

Pension Wealth and the Gender Wealth Gap, (2022) with Markus Grabka and Eva Sierminska (here ) European Journal of Population, 38(4), 755-810.

El entorno urbano y las aspiraciones de los padres sobre la educación de sus hijos en México,  with Ernesto Aguayo.  Revista de Economía, Sobre México Temas en economía, vol. 3(1), pages 34-44

Wealth after divorce: The importance of pension rights adjustment in women's wealth accumulation ) with Markus Grabka and Eva Sierminska 

We examine the importance of pension rights adjustment after divorce for women's wealth accumulation considering several wealth concepts including net worth, (statutory) pension wealth and augmented wealth. We incorporate marital history in the analysis and find that having gone through divorce is on average positively and significantly correlated with statutory pension wealth overall and for remarried women. A negative relationship exists with augmented wealth, smaller than with net worth. The effect is stable at the bottom and middle of the wealth distribution, but disappears for top wealth holders. Given cultural differences the finding is confirmed only in western Germany, possibly due to higher wealth levels and a higher earnings gap than in the eastern part of the country. Our findings suggest that pension equalization can be a suitable means of partially cushioning the financial disadvantages of divorce on wealth accumulation and thus reducing old-age poverty among women in the long run. 

Effects of Increased Immigration Enforcement on Citizens' Self-Employment (here) 

The recent increase in interior immigration enforcement in the U.S. has reduced the number of low skilled workers by increasing deportations of undocumented immigrants.  In this paper, I study how these immigration enforcement policies affect the  self-employment shares of citizens. I examine the impact of four immigration enforcement policies, each implemented with a staggered roll-out across the U.S. and ending up with different adoption levels. I implement a Difference-in-Differences strategy and an event-study specification using data from 2005 to 2014 from the American Community Survey. I find that increased immigration enforcement decreased the share self-employed among male and female citizens of the United States, which is consistent with predictions that undocumented immigrants are complementary to self-employed citizens. The reduction of citizens' self-employment is concentrated among high school graduates. There is one exception, increased enforcement led to an increase in self-employment shares among male Hispanic citizens, which implies that the  undocumented workers were substitutes for self-employed Hispanic citizens.  To enable comparison with previous studies, I estimate the effects of immigration enforcement programs on citizens’ employment. I find that employment verification mandates decrease wage and salary employment shares of citizens, therefore, the mandates are not causing the self-employed to switch into wage and salary employment.  

Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Duration in Mexico City (draft available upon request)

This paper studies the impact of establishing an Unemployment Insurance (UI) in a developing country. Mexico City was the first city in Mexico to provide formal workers government funded unemployment benefits. With this setting I study the effects of establishing an UI program in a developing country with high informal activity levels and a weak safety net on unemployment duration.  Does UI improves job search and decrease unemployment duration?   Or does it incentivize longer unemployment spells?  I estimate a Differences-in-Differences unemployment duration model, in which the reemployment probability can vary before and after introducing UI using other Mexican cities as a control group. I find no evidence of an effect on unemployment duration with the introduction of UI. Even workers with low levels of education, who might have the lowest reservation wages do not have a higher probability of staying unemployed with the introduction of UI. The explanation to these null effects can be that UI the benefits levels are low and that the program requires users to prove they are looking for a job, increasing the probability of finding a job.  

Do Cyclical Fluctuations in Local Economic Conditions Lead to Changes in Student Achievement on Standardized Tests? Evidence from County Panel Data with Jessamyn Schaller

Effects of Secure Communities on Children's Care with Mary Evans and Antonia Vazquez 

Differential Effects of COVID-19 on Children in Mixed-Status Households with Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes