Research

Abstract: Can collective action drive transformations in social roles and attitudes? I study the effect of local exposure to women's suffrage protests in the early 20th century in the US on different indicators of gender roles. Enfranchisement was anticipated to enhance women's awareness, leading to a critical reevaluation of more traditional family structures, according to suffrage movement leaders. This study investigates whether raising awareness about one's rights, alongside obtaining them, can foster social transformations. I study cross-county marches organized between 1912 and 1914 by a group of activists to ask women's right to vote. I build a novel historical database using local newspaper archives to map the itinerary of the marches. Then, using individual-level data from US censuses (1880-1920), I compare individual outcomes in localities along the suffragettes' paths with those along roads of similar importance in the same state, both before and after the marches. Results suggest that exposure to suffragette demonstrations led to significant changes, including (i) an increase in young women's university enrollment rates, (ii) a decline in fertility among married women, and (iii) an increase in school enrollment for teenage girls in small families. Additionally, evidence from newspaper coverage suggests that women were likely exposed to suffragette ideas beyond the marches due to the relative growing interest in the topic in the towns treated in the following years, as evidenced by newspaper mentions of suffrage-related activities.

Presentations: IEB Workshop on Political Economy, AFEPOP, Yale–UB HPE Workshop, European meeting of the UEA, XVI COSME Gender Economics Workshop, EEAYE, EHS, IMERA-AMSE Workshop in Gender inequalities, Development Reading Group at Boston University, Graduate Workshop in Economic History at Harvard University, World Cliometrics Conference, LAGV, AFSE, FRESH Workshop, IRES Lunch Seminar and Lewis Lab Graduate Student Workshop.

Abstract: We study the employment responses of teenagers to changes in local economic opportunities induced by improvements in transport infrastructure, and the potential consequences for education and longer-term life trajectories. We exploit the timeline of US highway construction in the mid-20th century and combine US Census data from 1940 to 1980 with historical records on highway locations and opening times. Employing an established instrumental variable to account for the non-random placement of highways combined with a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that road connectivity increases participation in the labor market. This effect is primarily driven by teenage boys starting to work as (unpaid family) farm laborers in the agricultural sector, whose employment share has declined at a slower rate in connected counties. Finally, although evidence suggests no significant short-term impact on educational enrollment, further investigation indicates that the employment effects of early connection to the highway network persist into adulthood and are associated with a lower level of welfare.

Presentations: RES & SES Annual Conference, European Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society, Decentralized Mobility and Electricity Working Group Seminar, North American meeting of the UEA, EALE, JMA, European meeting of the UEA, RGS and ADRES.

Abstract: Following the Civil War, miscegenation laws were introduced across the United States. These laws declared interracial marriages "prohibited and void," making them a cornerstone policy of segregation. According to Cox (1960), the primary motive behind the adoption of these laws was to prevent Black Americans from climbing the social ladder. Thus, by exploiting the staggered adoption of these laws across states, we test the hypothesis that their adoption contributed to maintaining the economic disparities between racial groups, inherited from slavery. To do so, we combine information on state-level miscegenation laws with individual data from the US censuses (1870-1940) and implement a generalized difference-in-differences strategy. Our results indicate that the laws increased the probability of Black Americans being employed as farmworkers by approximately 3%, and decreased the likelihood of being farm managers by 53%. These findings suggest that the implementation of miscegenation laws contributed to maintaining an exploitative agricultural system. Our results are robust to testing for pre-trends and implementing advanced staggered difference-in-differences techniques.

Presentations: EHA, AMSE PhD Seminar and EHS.