Working papers

School Closures and Parental Labor Supply: Differential Effects of Anticipated and Unanticipated Closures (with Kalaivani Karunanethy and Rafael Lalive)

This paper studies labor supply responses of parents to anticipated school closures due to school holidays and unanticipated school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland. In Switzerland, the timing of school breaks varies by region, and, using this source of variation, we find that both fathers and mothers reduce hours worked in response to school holiday closures, compared to non-parents. To identify the effects of pandemic closures, we focus on resilient workers – those in occupations that are resilient to the pandemic and whose labor supply remains unaffected by Swiss workplace closures. We find that pandemic school closures reduced hours worked of mothers and fathers, but somewhat less than for non-parents. Among mothers, we find that the unanticipated pandemic school closures had almost no negative effects. For fathers, we find that labor supply somewhat increases, compared to non-fathers. When we probe this result further, we find that fathers of children who are at least 12 years old and/or fathers who work in an occupation that is compatible with working from home, expand labor supply to non-fathers. This suggests that parents were able to accommodate the increased child care needs due to lack of in-person schooling.

Work in progress

The Impact of Trade Shocks on Job Search Behavior (with Fabrizio Colella, Rafael Lalive and Alberto Marcato)

Corporate Taxation and Export Behavior (single-authored)

Policy work

An Economic Analysis of the US-China Trade Conflict (with Eddy Bekkers)

This paper provides an economic analysis of the trade conflict between the US and China, providing an overview of the tariff increases, a discussion of the background of the trade conflict, and an analysis of the economic effects of the trade conflict, based both on empirics (ex post analysis) and on simulations (ex ante analysis). Bilateral tariffs have increased on average to 17% between the US and China, and the Phase One Agreement signed in January 2020 between the two countries only leads to minor reductions in the tariffs to 16%. The trade conflict has led to a sizeable reduction in trade between the US and China in 2019 and is accompanied by considerable trade diversion to imports from other regions, leading to a reorganization of value chains in (East) Asia. The simulation analysis shows that the direct effects of the tariff increases on the global economy are limited (0.1% reduction in global GDP). The impact of the Phase One Agreement on the global economy is even smaller, although the US is projected to turn real income losses into real income gains because of the Chinese commitments to buy additional US goods. The biggest impact of the trade conflict is provoked by rising uncertainty about trade policy and the paper provides a framework to analyze the uncertainty effects.