La participación de las mujeres en el mercado laboral ha convergido con la de los hombres en numerosas economías con un alto nivel de ingresos en las últimas décadas. Por ejemplo, en la zona euro (según datos de mercado de trabajo de Eurostat), el porcentaje de mujeres empleadas en la población de 20 a 64 años pasó del 54,9% en el año 2000 al 67,2% en 2019, un incremento de 12,3 puntos porcentuales. Durante el mismo período, la misma estadística se mantuvo bastante estable para el caso de los hombres, con un ligero aumento de solo 2 puntos porcentuales. Los datos sobre brechas de género de la OCDE también revelan una reducción de la brecha salarial (expresada como porcentaje de los ingresos medios de los hombres) en los países de la OCDE, del 18,1% en el año 2000, al 12,6% en 2019. Sin embargo, las mujeres siguen estando infrarrepresentadas en las ocupaciones de mayor nivel profesional y mejor pagadas, y sobrerrepresentadas en los trabajos a tiempo parcial y más inseguros.

12 de diciembre de 2024 – 11h-13.15h – Sede Naturgy

The prevalence and determinants of intimate partner violence (IPV) among older women are understudied. This paper documents that the incidence of IPV remains high at old ages and provides the first evidence of the impact of access to income on IPV for older women. We leverage a Mexican reform that lowered the eligibility age for a non-contributory pension and a difference-in-differences approach. Women’s eligibility for the pension increases their probability of being subjected to economic, psychological, and physical IPV. The estimated effects are found only among women in the short term and are more pronounced for women who experienced family violence in childhood and those from poorer households. Looking at potential mechanisms, we find suggestive evidence that men use violence as a tool to control women’s resources. Additionally, women reduce paid employment after becoming eligible for the pension, which may result in more time spent at home and greater exposure to violent partners. In contrast, we show that IPV does not increase when men become eligible for the non-contributory pension.

This paper provides a theoretical framework to study the relationship between expanded road capacity, traffic volumes and increased economic activity. We build on Anas (2024) to show that increased traffic volumes do not necessarily lead to congestion if adjustments in econòmic factors, such as population or employment, are not substantial. We test our predictions obtaining key estimates with data from Great Britain between 2001 and 2020, and adopting a shift-share instrumental variable approach. We find that the elasticity of vehicle kilometers traveled to road capacity improvements is positive and statistically different from 1 across different specifications, while the elasticity of population and employment is positive but smaller than 1. In our framework this implies that the cost of driving does not increase above initial levels, resulting in higher consumer surplus through changes in travel demand and time savings.

This paper examines the lasting impact of tourism specialization on per capita income in Spanish municipalities, aiming to understand the factors driving these effects. We employ two distinct approaches. The first one focuses on tourism development since the initial boom in the 1960s and relies on cross-sectional variation in tourism exposure related to amenities like beaches and weather for identification. The second method looks at a later wave of tourism development in the 1990s, using a shift-share analysis that combines the share of residents from tourist-source countries in each municipality with the growth rate of tourists from these countries throughout Spain. The findings indicate that municipalities with the highest growth in tourism specialization now exhibit lower per capita income. A municipality experiencing an increase in tourism per capita over time equal to the sample median has a per capita income between 21% and 22% lower as of 2019, depending on the approach used. This decline in income is associated with an increase in temporary job contracts, with a decrease in industrial employment, and with lower levels of educational attainment.

Have the recent changes in reproductive rights changed women’s perceptions of discrimination and fair treatment relative to men’s perceptions? To address this question, we collected online survey data (N=1,374) during spring 2023 using a randomized design that provided information about the enactment of State antiabortion laws and the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court to a treatment group but no information to an untreated control group. This exogenous variation in information dissemination was used to analyze perceived fairness and discrimination of treated individuals, by sex. We find that treatment increases women’s overall perception of discrimination and unfair treatment in the US by 11.5 percent of a standard deviation and their perception relative to men by 21.8 percent of a standard deviation, widening an already existing gender gap. These results support the notion that the recent state and federal abortion restrictions can impact individuals’ perceptions of fairness and discrimination in the U.S. and do so differentially by gender.