Working papers

"Opt Out or Top Up? Voluntary Healthcare Insurance and the Public vs. Private Substitution", with Daniele Fabbri. WP DSE No. 780 and IZA Discussion Paper No. 5952, September 2011.

 

"On the Intergenerational Transmission of Time Use Patterns. Is a Good Example the Best Sermon?" with Anna Laura Mancini and Silvia Pasqua. WP DSE No. 792 and IZA Discussion Paper No. 6038, October 2011.

 

 

Work in progress (with abstracts)

"Birth Order and Child Outcomes: Does Maternal Quality Time matter?" with Sarah Grace See. Presented at the European Society for Population Economics, June 2011.

Abstract

Higher birth order positions are associated with poorer outcomes, possibly due to less resources received within the household. Using a sample of sibling pairs from the Child Development Supplement of the PSID (Panel Study of Income Dynamics), we investigate whether the birth order effects in children outcomes are due to differences in maternal quality time inputs. While the OLS results show negative birth order and positive maternal time effects on various test scores, household fixed effects estimation suggests that birth order effects do not stand for differences in maternal quality time received.

 

 

"Children Time-use Choices and the Production of Cognitive Ability" with Daniela Del Boca and Cheti Nicoletti. Presented at the International Association for Time Use Research Conference, Oxford, August 2011.

Abstract

There is an extensive literature on the effect of early childhood investments on children cognitive development. But most socio-economic surveys lack proper and reliable measures of investments in the children’s development process. Better measures of these inputs, such as the time parents spend reading to their children and the time children spend having special lessons are available in time diary surveys, but only few papers have used time diaries to measure time investment in children. Our work adds to this literature by looking at time investments by parents as well as by children. To our knowledge, children’s active role in the production function of cognitive ability has been neglected so far. In spite of that, there is a general consensus on the importance of children’s role and in particular of children’s choices as determinants of children’s outcomes. Information on how children use their time separately from parents is probably little informative for babies and toddlers, but it gets more and more important when children begin to have more control on their actions and start to take decisions independently. By using the Child Development Supplement of the PSID (Panel Study of Income Dynamics) we show that quality time children spend on their own has a significant effect on cognitive outcomes in late childhood and during adolescence, while mother's quality time appears not to be relevant in this stage of life.