Three essays in Empirical Public Economics

In this dissertation, I study the role of policies and institutions to foster social inclusion. In particular, in two of my projects, I use the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) dataset to analyze the impact of institutions and policies on individuals' decisions. In the fi rst Chapter, I exploit the historical context and study how the Soviet regime changed women's choices within the Soviet sphere regarding educational attainment, labor participation, marriage and fertility. In the second chapter, I consider the role of employment status and the probability to provide informal care to elders in Europe. Finally, in the third part of my doctoral dissertation, I study the role of self-regulation to mitigate the ethnic discrimination on the largest hospitality platform, Airbnb. The firt rst Chapter, "USSR, Education, Work History, Fertility Choices, and Later-Life Outcomes" (with Telmo P erez-Izquierdo), investigates the diference in the impact of the Soviet regime on life decisions within the Soviet sphere. We use the retrospective SHARELIFE data to analyze the educational, labor, marriage, and fertility decisions of East Europeans from 1950 to 1990. The main identi cation strategy is a natural experiment in which we compare former provinces of the Russian Empire in Lithuania and Poland that were exposed to different forms of communism after WWII. For 40 years, Lithuania was a part of the USSR, whereas Poland was a part of the Eastern Bloc. We find that during communism, Lithuanian women worked two years more by age 50 relative to Polish women. This effect is half of the one found for the East-West Germany comparison. Moreover, we observe that women's educational attainment increased more than men's. We propose a potential mechanism behind this fact: an indirect channel of improved work opportunities on female education. Accordingly, this paper's fi ndings highlight the different impacts of the Soviet regime within communist countries. The second Chapter, "Impact of Employment on Informal Caregiving to the Elderly Mothers in Europe", studies the trade-off faced by adult individuals in Europe between participating in the labor market and providing informal care to their elderly mothers. Using the SHARE data, I develop a bivariate simultaneous choice model of work and informal care. To correct for the endogeneity of employment status in care decision, I exploit the heterogeneous impact of the Great Recession on European countries as an exclusion restriction in a non-linear setting. When individuals between 50 and below statutory retirement age participate in the labor market, the probability of providing informal care to elder mothers decreases by about nine percentage points. This nding documents the negative causal relationship between employment and the provision of informal care in Europe. The third Chapter, "Online Discrimination and (Self ) Regulation: Evaluating the Airbnb's Nondiscrimination Policy" (with Michelangelo Rossi), is motivated by the following fact digital platforms have changed the ways of doing business in many markets. Still, some characteristics of the transactions occurring online remain unaltered relative to the traditional off-line settings: discrimination of minorities is one of them. Without clear legislative frameworks, in recent years platforms tried to reduce these issues with self-regulations. In this paper, we study the Airbnb's Nondiscrimination policy implemented at the end of 2016. The share of hosts who cannot reject - and potentially discriminate - guests more than doubled after two years from the policy. Accordingly, the number of guests with non-white names on the platform slightly increased. Yet, the proportion of guests with non-white names accepted by hosts who can discriminate guests did not signi cantly change after the policy.USSR, Education, Work History, Fertility Choices, and Later-Life Outcomes / Elisaveta Pronkina, Telmo Pérez-Izquierdo. -- Impact of Employment on Informal Caregiving to the Elderly Mothers in Europe / Elisaveta Pronkina. -- Online Discrimination and (Self) Regulation: Evaluating the Airbnb's Non discrimination Policy / Elisaveta Pronkina, Michelangelo Rossi.Programa de Doctorado en Economía por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidenta: Raquel Fonseca Benito.- Secretario: Jan Leonard Stuhler.- Vocal: Eric Bonsan

The heterogeneous effects of the Great Recession on informal care to the elderly

This paper studies the role of unobserved factors to measure the impact of the economic downturn on informal care availability to the elderly in Europe. We use the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which allows controlling for socio-demographic variables. Our results show that the impact of the Great Recession on care receipt depends not only on observed, but also on unobserved characteristics. For 21 percent of the sample, the effect is three to four times larger than the average effect for the entire sample. For 57 percent of the sample, there is no effect of the economic crisis, and this is due to unobservable factors. In our estimation process, we are able to characterize how this unobserved heterogeneity correlates with the observable variables. Moreover, we show that if the unobserved heterogeneity in the effect of the crisis is ignored, then we are not able to capture that there is no effect for more than half of the individuals, even if we allow for unobserved heterogeneity in the intercept of the model and for the heterogeneous effect of the crisis based on observables.Support from Agencia Estatal de Investigación del Gobierno de España, grant RTI2018-095231-BI00, and Comunidad de Madrid (Spain), grant EPUC3M11 (V PRICIT), are gratefully acknowledged

Behind the curtain: How did women's work history vary across Central and Eastern Europe?

This paper investigates the differences in female work experience across Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). We use retrospective SHARELIFE data to analyse women's work history from 1950 to 1990. We provide descriptive evidence that women's work experience varied across CEECs. Furthermore, we argue that comparing the former provinces of the Russian Empire in Lithuania and Poland provides a natural experiment, allowing us to disentangle the effect of the differential implementation of the Soviet regime from the pre-existing differences. We find that during communism, Lithuanian women worked 2 years more by age 50 relative to their Polish counterparts. This effect is one-third of that found in the East–West Germany comparison. We propose several potential mechanisms behind this finding: the degree of land collectivization, the Church's influence and the sectoral composition. Accordingly, this study's findings highlight the importance of country differences in CEECs.The funding from Comunidad de Madrid, Grant/Award Numbers: EPUC3M11 (V PRICIT), H2019/HUM-589; Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion, Grant/Award Numbers: ECO2017-86675-P, MCI/AEI/FEDER/UE, PGC 2018-096732-B-100

ON THE ISSUE OF THE STUDY OF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY

  Objective: The article focuses on the topical problem of the functioning of autobiographical memory, which is considered as a higher mental function. The aim of the research is to study autobiographical memory of people of different age groups using the method of free recall of events.Methods: The main parameters of the analysis are as follows: Memories peak,†subjective importance of the events and dynamics of autobiographical memory.Results: The research results suggest that positive experiences dominate in the structure of autobiographical memory. This may indicate psychological protective mechanisms of a person. The dynamics of autobiographical memory is observed in all age groups. This results in changing the evaluation of events. This can be explained by a change in personality, the transformation of values, interests and moral principles of a person.Conclusion: The study revealed that subjects of all age groups primarily remember old events and, last of all, the events of the recent past

Descriptions of eight new species of Ligophorus Euzet & Suriano, 1977 (Monogenea: Ancyrocephalidae) from Red Sea mullets

Eight new species of Ligophorus Euzet & Suriano, 1977 (Monogenea: Ancyrocephalidae) are described from two species of mullets from the Red Sea. Ligophorus bykhowskyi n. sp. and L. zhangi n. sp. from Crenimugil crenilabris (Forsskal) differ from other species of the genus in the structure of the male copulatory organ, which has a simple accessory piece and a wide copulatory tube that arises from a large, single-chambered, expanded base. Ligophorus simpliciformis n. sp., L. bipartitus n. sp., L. campanulatus n. sp., L. mamaevi n. sp., L. lebedevi n. sp. and L. surianoae n. sp. from Liza carinata (Valenciennes) are differentiated on the basis of the morphometrics of the hard parts of the haptor and male copulatory organ. The eight species represent the first records of species directly attributed to Ligophorus from the Red Sea. Measurements of the haptoral hard-parts and the male copulatory organ of the new species are analysed with the aid of Principal Component Analysis. Three morphological types of male copulatory organ, five types of anchor, and two types of ventral and three types of dorsal bars were distinguished among these species. L. bykhowskyi and L. zhangi from C. crenilabris have the same type of male copulatory organ and anchors. Those species from Liza carinata have only one common morphological character, a thick copulatory tube, but have two types of accessory piece, four types of anchors and three types of bars. All species of Ligophorus found on mullets in the Red Sea have an accessory piece without a distal bifurcation and thus differ from most species of this genus from other regions of the world’s oceans