Work in Progress

 

Performance Pay and Judicial Production: Evidence from Spain (joint with Berta Esteve-Volart)
Preliminary version: May 2010 (pdf)

Top Civil Service: Meritocracy or Nepotism? (joint with Berta Esteve-Volart)
Preliminary version: January 2009 (pdf)

Politicians’ Luck of the Draw: Evidence from the Spanish Christmas Lottery (joint with Berta Esteve-Volart)

Recent Working Papers

Does gender matter for academic promotion? Evidence from a randomized natural experiment (joint with Natalia Zinovyeva)
FEDEA Working Paper #2010/15
This version: July 2010 (pdf)

Given the lack of women in academia, several countries have recently adopted gender quotas in hiring and promotion committees. This paper studies whether these policies may work. The identification strategy exploits the random assignment mechanism in place between 2002 and 2006 in all academic disciplines in Spain to select the members of promotion committees. We find that a larger share of female evaluators increases the chances of success of female applicants to full professor positions, but it decreases the chances of success of female applicants to associate professor positions. The evidence is consistent with the existence of ambivalent sexism, and with some female evaluators behaving strategically.

 

Are Women Pawns in the Political Game? Evidence from Elections to the Spanish Senate (joint with Berta Esteve-Volart)
FEDEA Working Paper #2009/30
Revised and resubmitted to American Economic Journals: Economic Policy
This version: July 2010 (pdf)

This paper investigates why gender quotas in candidate lists have often lead to disappointing increases in the number of elected female politicians. Using data from Spain, we find that parties tend to nominate female candidates to poorer positions on the ballot, with the exception of constituencies where order on the ballot is irrelevant for the electoral outcome. Taking advantage of the particular framework of Senate elections, where ballot order is alphabetical, we find that these gender patterns reflect parties' strategies: women (but not men) are selected by parties on the basis of last name. We examine whether this is due to voter bias or party bias, and find two pieces of evidence supporting the latter: female candidates attract more votes, and political competition increases female representation.

Media impact:
-An article based on this paper appeared in Voxeu.org
-An article in the blog Nadaesgratis.es summarizes the findings of our work and discusses its implications for the reform of the Senate ballot (in Spanish)
-Click here for a speech by the President of the Spanish Securities and Exchange Commission (CNMV) discussing our results (in Spanish)
-See article in Peruprensa (in Spanish)

 

Do Recruiters Prefer Applicants with Similar Skills? Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment (joint with María José Pérez Villadóniga)
Universidad Carlos III Working Paper #2009/62
This version: September 2009 (pdf)

In this paper we examine the potential existence of a similar-to-me effect in terms of skills between recruiters and applicants. Using evidence from entry exams to the Spanish Judiciary, where applicants are randomly assigned across evaluation committees, we find that committee members tend to be more demanding at those stages where they are more knowledgeable. As a result, applicants who excel in the same dimensions as recruiters are more likely to be hired.

 

Why Do I Like People Like Me? (joint with María José Pérez Villadóniga)
Universidad Carlos III Working Paper #2008/06
Revise and resubmit to Journal of Economic Theory
This version: December 2009 (pdf)

In this paper we extend the standard model of statistical discrimination to a multidimensional framework where the accuracy of evaluators depends on how knowledgeable they are in each dimension. The model yields two main implications. First, candidates who excel in the same dimensions as the evaluator tend to be preferred. Second, if two equally productive groups of workers differ in their distribution of ability across dimensions, group discrimination will arise unless (i) evaluators are well informed about the extent of these differences and (ii) evaluators are allowed to take candidates' group belonging into account in their assessments. Our results suggest that, in some cases, blind evaluations may actually be counterproductive.

Press:
-This paper has been featured in the business newspaper ‘Expansion’ (in Spanish)

Recent Publications

 

Can Gender Parity Break the Glass Ceiling? Evidence from a Repeated Randomized Experiment (joint with Berta Esteve-Volart)
Review of Economic Studies, 77:4, 2010. (pdf)

This paper studies whether the gender composition of recruiting committees matters. We make use of the exceptional evidence provided by Spanish public examinations, where the allocation of candidates to evaluating committees is random. We analyze how the chances of success of 150,000 female and male candidates to the four main Corps of the Spanish Judiciary over 1987-2006 were affected by the gender of their evaluators. We find that a female (male) candidate is significantly less likely to pass the exam whenever she is randomly assigned to a committee where the share of female (male) evaluators is relatively greater.

Press:
-This paper has been featured in ‘La Gaceta de los Negocios’, ‘La Vanguardia’ and ‘El País’ (all in Spanish)
-A previous version of the paper was featured in ‘El País’, ‘La Vanguardia’, ‘ABC’ and ‘La Gaceta de los Negocios’   (all in Spanish)
-Listen to the radio interview in one the main Spanish radio programs: La Ventana, Cadena SER
-An article based on this paper appeared in Voxeu.org
-An article based on this paper appeared in SociedadAbierta.es (in Spanish)

 

Do On-Line Labor Market Intermediaries Matter? The impact of AlmaLaurea on University-to-Work transition (joint with Mauro Sylos Labini)
NBER Working Paper #13621 (pdf)
Published in David H. Autor (ed), NBER book Studies of Labor Market Intermediation (pp. 127-154). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

This paper evaluates the impact of the availability of electronic labor markets on university-to-work transition. In particular, we analyze the effect of the intermediation activity carried on by the interuniversity consortium AlmaLaurea on graduates’ labor market outcomes. Different timing of universities’ enrolment in AlmaLaurea produces counterfactuals that allow us to overcome the problems faced by previous empirical investigations. The evaluation is performed applying the difference-in-differences method to a repeated cross section data set. It is shown that, if the usual assumption concerning parallel outcomes holds, AlmaLaurea reduces individual unemployment probability and improves matching quality. Interestingly, it is also found that on-line intermediaries foster graduates’ geographical mobility.

Press:
-This paper has been featured in the business newspaper ‘Il Sole 24 ore’ (in Italian)  

 

Differential Grading Standards and University Funding: Evidence from Italy (joint with Mauro Sylos Labini and Natalia Zinovyeva)
CESifo Economic Studies 54 (2), 149-176, 2008.

This paper documents that grades vary significantly across Italian universities and degrees. We provide evidence suggesting that these differences reflect the heterogeneity of grading standards. A straightforward implication of this result is that university funding schemes based on students’ academic performance do not necessary favour universities that generate higher value added. We test this for the case of the Italian funds allocation system, which rewards universities according to the number of exams passed by their students. We find that university departments that rank higher according to this indicator actually tend to be significantly worse in terms of their graduates’ performance in the labour market.

Press:
-An article based on this paper appeared in Voxeu.org