Research

“Leaders and followers: Gender norms and household location choices”

Abstract: In this paper, I study the impact of location choices on earnings and employment by gender and marital status, using administrative data from France. With staggered difference-in-difference design I show that married women are the only group for whom moving induces a temporary income loss of around 7\% in the two years following the move. I then study the within-household effect of moves for married couples and find that on average moving leads to a loss of total household income. For households which were egalitarian before the move, meaning both partners earned approximately the same income I show that an income gap opens up in favor of the man after moving. Those two results are not consistent with a gender neutral mechanism in which households maximise total income and prioritise the primary earner's income. Instead, it points to a role of gender norms, where households prioritise men's career over women's.

“Gender and the city: gaps in the urban wage premium”

Abstract: The existence of an urban wage premium has been largely established by the urban economics litterature. However, despite many potential mechanism, there is no consensus on its heterogeneity by gender. In this paper, I adapt the standard two-step approach to estimate the urban wage premium by gender and marital status. I find that women benefit 50\% more than men from city density in terms of income. I also document that women experience a higher "big city employment premium": their probability of being unemployed decreases 50% more with density than men’s. Finally, I show that these elasticities are not significantly different for married men or women than for single ones.

“Within- and between- city real income disparities”, with Pierre-Philippe Combes, Laurent Gobillon, Aurélie Sotura and Tanguy van Ypersele

“National wage setting in France”, with Dimitrije Ruzic and Lin Tian