Job Market Paper

Inheritance Expectations, Dynastic Altruism, and Education

Presented at: UPF Applied Lunch Seminar, BSE Jamboree, Helsinki PhD Workshop on Economics of Education, EALE 2023 (Prague), UPF-CREI Macro Lunch, 1st Imperial College PhD Conference in Economics and Finance, EDP Jamboree 2024 (Barcelona), 3rd PhD and Post-Doctoral Workshop in Economics and Finance (Naples)
This paper shows that intergenerational asset transfers matter for intragenerational education choices. Based on Italian micro-data, I document that (i) expecting an inheritance predicts university enrollment, and (ii) having received or expecting an inheritance predicts the intention to leave a bequest, consistent with heterogeneity in dynastic altruism. I rationalize these findings with a stylized model where individuals from altruistic dynasties accumulate human capital to increase long-term earnings, hence the ability to finance bequests. Through a richer quantitative lifecycle model, I show that heterogeneity in bequest motives and coresidence patterns can account for more than 40% of the observed university enrollment gap between youths who do and do not expect an inheritance, whereas the expected financial transfer itself disincentivizes education. Policy experiments indicate that (i) estate taxation can raise enrollment rates, and (ii) the link between inheritance expectations and education is stronger when the discounted returns to education are lower.

Publications

Does the Feedback of Blood Results in Observational Studies Influence Response and Consent? A Randomised Study of the Understanding Society Innovation Panel

(joint work with Michaela Benzeval, Alexandria Andrayas, Tarek Al Baghal, Jonathon Burton, Thomas Crossley, Meena Kumari)

BMC Medical Research Methodology, (2023) 23:134


Working Papers

Domestic Inequality and Global Imbalances

(joint work with Andrej Mijakovic)
Presented at (* if by coauthor): 12th PhD Student Conference on International Macroeconomics (Paris Nanterre), European Central Bank IPA Economic Meeting*, Bank for International Settlements Research Seminar*, 2023 Annual Meeting of the Central Bank Research Association - CEBRA (New York), 23rd RIEF Doctoral Meeting*, 27th Theories and Methods in Macro - T2M (Amsterdam), PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2024, UCL Stone Center PhD Conference on Income and Wealth Inequality, EEA-ESEM 2024 (Rotterdam)*, BdF-EUI Conference on International Macro
This paper studies how the within-country distribution of income affects the current account. We document that higher income inequality is associated with higher current account balances across advanced and emerging economies. We identify permanent as opposed to transitory income inequality and domestic savings as opposed to investment as the underlying determinants. Building on the empirical analysis, we develop a two-country heterogeneous agent model and show that, all else equal, capital flows from unequal to equal countries. Non-homothetic preferences generate increasing saving rates across the distribution of permanent income which translate into current account surpluses under international capital mobility. We use the model to study the effects of redistributive policies, financial liberalisation and cross-border financial integration.

Work in progress

Decomposing cross-country trends in income inequality

(joint work with Andrej Mijakovic)

Classical and Non-Classical Measurement Errors in Blood Pressure Measures from Understanding Society: an Estimation

(joint work with Thomas Crossley)
In surveys, it is seldom possible to obtain the most accurate available measure of any variable of interest, given the high costs (monetary and not) associated to the necessary procedures. In the context of Understanding Society, we consider the setting of blood pressure measurements as gathered by nurses and compare them with self-taken and interviewer-taken ones. Assuming classical measurement error for nurse-taken measures and non-classical error for the other two sources, we estimate the parameters of interest through Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) in order to correct for any possible bias in measures exhibiting non-classical error.

Death by Waiting? Treatment Delays, Emergency Department Congestion and Patients’ Outcomes

(joint work with Matteo Lippi Bruni, Cristina Ugolini, and Rossella Verzulli)
Presented at: EuHEA Conference 2024 (Vienna)

Policy Publications

Effectiveness of Cohesion Policy: Learning from the Programme Characteristics that Produce the Best Results

(joint work with Zsolt Darvas, Antoine Mathieu-Collin and Catarina Midoes, prepared for the Regional Development Committee (REGI) of the European Parliament, 2019)

A Monetary Policy Framework for the ECB to Deal with Uncertainty

(joint work with Grégory Claeys and Maria Demertzis, prepared for the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) of the European Parliament, 2018)