Prof. Dr. Ana Fernandes

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Publikationen

Becker, Sascha O.; Fernandes, Ana and Doris Weichselbaumer (2019) “Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment” Labor Economics 59

Due to conventional gender norms, women are more likely to be in charge of childcare than men. From an employer's perspective, in their fertile age they are also at “risk” of pregnancy. Both factors potentially affect hiring practices of firms. We conduct a large-scale correspondence test in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, sending out approx. 9000 job applications, varying job candidate's personal characteristics such as marital status and age of children. We find evidence that, for part-time jobs, married women with older kids, who likely finished their childbearing cycle and have more projectable childcare chores than women with very young kids, are at a significant advantage vis-à-vis other groups of women. At the same time, married, but childless applicants, who have a higher likelihood to become pregnant, are at a disadvantage compared to single, but childless applicants to part-time jobs. Such effects are not present for full-time jobs presumably because, by applying to these in contrast to part-time jobs, women signal that they have arranged for external childcare.

Dellas, Harris and Ana Fernandes (2013) “Finance and Competition” Economic Journal 124, 269-288

We investigate the role of financial constraints for product market competition in a general equilibrium model, where firms may differ in terms of own wealth and/or efficiency. We find that, in general, the amelioration of financial constraints increases competition (it lowers the Lerner index of markups) in financially dependent sectors even when other standard concentration indexes indicate otherwise. Our analysis implies that disruptions in financial markets – such as the recent financial crisis – may have adverse effects on competition in product markets, a cost that has not been identified before.

Fernandes, Ana (2012) “A Closed-Form Solution to a Model of Two-Sided, Partial Altruism” Macroeconomic Dynamics 16, 230-239

This paper presents a closed-form characterization of the allocation of resources in an overlapping generations model of two-sided, partial altruism. Three assumptions are made: (i) parents and children play Markov strategies, (ii) utility takes the CRRA form, and (iii) the income of children is stochastic but proportional to the saving of parents. In families where children are rich relative to their parents, saving rates—measured as a function of the family's total resources—are higher than when children are poor relative to their parents. Income redistribution from the old to the young, therefore, leads to an increase in aggregate saving.

Fernandes, Ana (2011) “Altruism, Labor Supply and Redistributive Neutrality” Journal of Population Economics 24, 1443-1469

This paper presents a model of familial altruism in which labor supply is chosen endogenously. The model is used to address the predictions of Ricardian Equivalence, both theoretical and empirical. It is argued that, to the extent that income variation in the data comes mostly from wage and effort changes, the empirical tests of neutrality are misspecified. Numerical estimates suggest that quantitatively important deviations from neutrality may be at work.

Becker, Sascha O.; Bentolila, Samuel; Fernandes, Ana and Andrea Ichino (2010) “Youth Emancipation and Perceived Job Insecurity of Parents and Children” Journal of Population Economics 23

We test whether job insecurity of parents and children affect children’s moving-out decisions. Macroeconomic estimates for 13 European countries over 1983–2004 show that coresidence increases by 1.7 percentage points (PP) following a 10 PP rise in the share of youths perceiving their job to be insecure and declines by 1.1 PP following the same increment in insecurity for older workers. Microeconometric evidence for Italy in the mid-1990s shows that the probability of moving out increases by about half a percentage point for a one-standard-deviation increase in paternal insecurity and by one-third of a percentage point for a one-standard-deviation decrease in children’s insecurity.

Fernandes, Ana; Becker, Sascha O.; Bentolila, Samuel and Andrea Ichino (2008) “Income Insecurity and Youth Emancipation: A Theoretical Approach” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 8 (Cont)

In this paper, we propose a theoretical model to study the effect of income insecurity of parents and offspring on the child’s residential choice. Parents are partially altruistic toward their children and will provide financial help to an independent child when her income is low relative to the parents’. We find that children of more altruistic parents are more likely to become independent. However, first-order stochastic dominance (FOSD) shifts in the distribution of the child’s future income (or her parents’) have ambiguous effects on the child’s residential choice. Parental altruism is the very source of ambiguity in the results. If parents are selfish or the joint income distribution of parents and child places no mass on the region where transfers are provided, a FOSD shift in the distribution of the child’s (parents’) future income will reduce (raise) the child’s current income threshold for independence.

Dellas, Harris; Fernandes, Ana and Klaus Neusser (2007) “On the Equivalence of Quantitative Trade Restrictions and Tariffs” Economics Letters 96, 331-336

A difficulty with industrial policy regarding the uncertainty about infant industries' long-term potential. We argue that alternative commercial policy instruments may be associated with differences in the speed and accuracy with which the government learns about industry type.

Fernandes, Ana and Krishna Kumar (2007) “Inappropriate Technology” Macroeconomic Dynamics 11, 487-518

In this paper, we investigate incentives, other than altruism, that developed countries have for improving developing country technologies. We propose a simple model of international trade between two regions, in which individuals have preferences over an inferior good and a luxury good. The poor region has a comparative advantage in the production of the inferior good. Even when costly adaptation of the technology to the poor region's characteristics is required—making the technology inappropriate for local use—there are parameter configurations for which the rich region has an incentive to incur this cost. It benefits from a terms-of-trade improvement and from greater specialization in the luxury good. Indeed, there are cases where the rich region would prefer to improve the poor region's technology for producing the inferior good rather than its own. We apply our model to the Green Revolution and provide a quantitative assessment of its welfare effects.

Fernandes, Ana and Christopher Phelan (2000) “A Recursive Formulation for Repeated Agency with History Dependence” Journal of Economic Theory 91(2): 223-247

We present general recursive methods to handle environments where privately observed variables are linked over time. We show that incentive compatible contracts are implemented recursively with a threat keeping constraint in addition to the usual temporary incentive compatibility and promise keeping conditions.

Prof. Dr. Ana Fernandes

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Weitere Projekte

Publikationen

Becker, Sascha O.; Fernandes, Ana and Doris Weichselbaumer (2019) “Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment” Labor Economics 59

Dellas, Harris and Ana Fernandes (2013) “Finance and Competition” Economic Journal 124, 269-288

Fernandes, Ana (2012) “A Closed-Form Solution to a Model of Two-Sided, Partial Altruism” Macroeconomic Dynamics 16, 230-239

Fernandes, Ana (2011) “Altruism, Labor Supply and Redistributive Neutrality” Journal of Population Economics 24, 1443-1469

Becker, Sascha O.; Bentolila, Samuel; Fernandes, Ana and Andrea Ichino (2010) “Youth Emancipation and Perceived Job Insecurity of Parents and Children” Journal of Population Economics 23

Fernandes, Ana; Becker, Sascha O.; Bentolila, Samuel and Andrea Ichino (2008) “Income Insecurity and Youth Emancipation: A Theoretical Approach” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 8 (Cont)

Dellas, Harris; Fernandes, Ana and Klaus Neusser (2007) “On the Equivalence of Quantitative Trade Restrictions and Tariffs” Economics Letters 96, 331-336

Fernandes, Ana and Krishna Kumar (2007) “Inappropriate Technology” Macroeconomic Dynamics 11, 487-518

Fernandes, Ana and Christopher Phelan (2000) “A Recursive Formulation for Repeated Agency with History Dependence” Journal of Economic Theory 91(2): 223-247