The role of children and work-from-home in gender labor market asymmetries: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America.

Asymmetry in childcare responsibilities is one of the main reasons behind gender gaps in the labor market. In that context, the ability to work from home may alleviate the hindrances of women with children to participate in the labor market. We study these issues in Latin America, a region with wide gender gaps, in the framework of a major shock that severely affected employment: the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 curtain: Can past communist regimes explain the vaccination divide in Europe?

As of December 2021, all former Communist countries from Central and Eastern Europe were still lagging behind in terms of COVID-19 vaccination rates in Europe. Can institutional legacy explain, at least in part, this heterogeneity in vaccination decisions across Europe? To study this question we exploit novel data from the second wave of the SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe) COVID-19 Survey fielded in Summer (2021) that covers older individuals in 27 European countries. First, we document lower COVID-19 vaccine take-up amongst those who were born under Communism in Europe.

Robinson Crusoe: less or more depressed? With whom and where to live in a pandemic if you are above 50.

Did the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic and the various lockdown measures taken by European governments in the spring of 2020 impact individuals aged 50 and over differently according to their living arrangements and housing conditions? Focusing on three indicators of mental well-being, depression, loneliness and trouble sleeping, this paper answers the question using data on Europeans interviewed in the SHARE Corona Survey, fielded right after the first wave of the pandemic in summer 2020, linked longitudinally with two previous waves of SHARE (2013 and 2015). We find that the first wave of the pandemic changed the association between mental health and living arrangements and housing conditions. New to this pandemic period, the mental well-being of those who lived only with a spouse declined relative to the general population aged 50+.

COVID-19 lockdown and domestic violence: Evidence from internet-search behavior in 11 countries.

We study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on domestic violence in 11 countries with different ex-ante incidence of domestic violence (DV) and lockdown intensity. We use a novel measure of DV incidents that allows us to make cross-country comparisons: a Google search intensity index of DV-related topics. Our difference-in-difference estimates show an increase in DV search intensity after lockdown (30%), with larger effects as more people stayed at home (measured with Google Mobility Data).

The effect of working hours on health.

Does working time affect workers' health behavior and health? We study this question in the context of a French reform that reduced the standard workweek from 39 to 35 hours, at constant earnings. Our empirical analysis exploits arguably exogenous variation in the reduction of working time across employers due to the reform. We find that the shorter workweek reduced smoking by six percentage points, corresponding to 16% of the baseline mean.