María Alexandra Castellanos

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Immigration, Parenthood and Child Penalties

Published in , 2009

In this paper I analyse the impact of a larger provision of domestic services on child penalties, focusing on the Spanish migration boom as an exceptional case study. The sudden supply shock in domestic and childcare services stemming from this event provides a unique quasi-experimental setting to examine whether the availability of affordable childcare and household services can reduce gender disparities and the penalties associated with parenthood. Using a novel individual-level measure of child penalty and a rich employer-employee administrative dataset, I find that the expansion of affordable domestic services driven by the inflow of female immigrant workers reduced the child penalties gender gap for native workers. The effect is persistent over time and more pronounced for relatively lower-skilled native women, suggesting that affordable substitutes for household production can help not only to alleviate gender gaps but also to reduce within-gender disparities.

research

Immigration, Parenthood and Child Penalties

María Alexandra Castellanos
I analyse the impact of an expansion of household services availability on child penalties. The sudden supply shock in domestic and childcare services stemming from the Spanish migration boom provides a unique quasi-experimental setting to examine whether the availability of affordable substitutes for household production can reduce gender disparities in the labour market and the penalties associated with parenthood. Using a novel individual-level measure of child penalty and a rich matched employer-employee administrative dataset, I combine a difference-in-differences strategy with an instrumental variable design. I find that the expansion of domestic services driven by the inflow of female immigrant workers reduced the gender gap associated with child penalties for native workers. The effect is persistent over time and more pronounced for relatively lower-skilled native women, suggesting that affordable substitutes for household production can help not only to alleviate gender gaps but also to reduce within-gender inequality.
Draft coming soon!

Quasi-Random Matches: Evidence from Dual Labor Markets

María Alexandra Castellanos, Henry Redondo, Jan Stuhler
A fast-growing literature studies how sorting into particular jobs, firms, or locations affects workers. The key challenge when studying such questions is the non-random sorting of workers. We propose a novel identification strategy that exploits the timing of worker-firm matching, by interacting high-frequency information on the duration of contracts on the labour supply and transitory fluctuations in job creation on the labour demand side. We apply this method to address a central question in dual labour markets: how do different contract types – fixed-term or permanent contracts – affect workers’ careers? We find that transitory variation in the opening of permanent contracts is highly predictive of individual contract upgrade probabilities. Reaching a permanent position translates into higher employment and earnings growth in the short-run. However, the stability derived from these positions does not seem to lead to long-lasting earnings growth differentials.
Draft available upon request

Immigration and native labour market outcomes. New Evidence from Spain

María Alexandra Castellanos
Understanding the effect of immigration in native labour market outcomes represents one of the most debated questions in the economic literature, after decades of research, no consensus has been reached. This paper addresses this question in the context of the immigration wave to Spain of the 2000’s through a pure spatial correlation approach. To identify causal estimates, the study applies an instrumental variable strategy exploiting information on early immigrant settlements from the two previous decades. Additionally, it implements an eventstudy design that allows to closely evaluate prior labour market trajectories. The results suggest that immigration led to large negative local employment responses for low-skilled workers, but only mild wage effects. Analysing margins of adjustment, it is found that the strong displacement effects are not necessarily attributable to job-losses, but mainly driven by a reduction of native inflows into work in more exposed regions.
Draft available upon request

talks

teaching

Universidad de las Américas

Economics Department, Quito, Ecuador, 2018

Main Instructor

  • Advanced Econometrics
    Spring 2018
    Spanish
  • International Trade
    Spring 2018
    Spanish

Universidad Carlos III

Economics Department, Madrid, Spain, 2022

AWARDS Vice Dean´s Teaching Excellence: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

Graduate Courses

  • Econometrics
    Master in Economics and Master in Industrial Economics & Markets
    TA for Professors César Alonso-Borrego and Ricardo Mora
    Fall 2021 English
  • Macroeconomics
    Master in Economics and Master in Industrial Economics & Markets
    TA for Professor Andrés Erosa
    Fall 2021
    English

Undergraduate Courses

  • Quantitative Microeconomics (Microeconometrics)
    Fall 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022
    English, Spanish
  • Econometric Techniques
    Fall 2020
    English
  • Applied Economics
    Spring 2020, 2021
    English, Spanish
  • Introduction to Mathematics for Economics
    Fall 2019
    Spanish

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Teaching experience 1

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Immigration, Parenthood and Child Penalties

In this paper I analyse the impact of a larger provision of domestic services on child penalties, focusing on the Spanish migration boom as an exceptional case study. The sudden supply shock in domestic and childcare services stemming from this event provides a unique quasi-experimental setting to examine whether the availability of affordable childcare and household services can reduce gender disparities and the penalties associated with parenthood. Using a novel individual-level measure of child penalty and a rich employer-employee administrative dataset, I find that the expansion of affordable domestic services driven by the inflow of female immigrant workers reduced the child penalties gender gap for native workers. The effect is persistent over time and more pronounced for relatively lower-skilled native women, suggesting that affordable substitutes for household production can help not only to alleviate gender gaps but also to reduce within-gender disparities.