Research

When Female Doctors Fly In: Access to Female Physicians in Primary Care

Policies addressing physician shortages typically target aggregate supply, yet the composition of the local workforce may also determine which health needs get met. I study a program that periodically sends a visiting female general practitioner (GP) to rural Australian towns where all resident physicians are male, comparing each woman's consultations with the visiting GP to her own consultations with local male providers. The same woman is roughly four times as likely to receive genitourinary or hormonal prescriptions when consulting the female GP, against a baseline of 6 percent, and more than ten times as likely to be screened for cervical cancer, against a baseline of 1 percent. Consultations with the female GP are also nearly four times as likely to be long, while placebo visits to other male providers generate no comparable response. Complementary difference-in-differences estimates, which exploit variation in when the program began across towns, show that prescribing effects are concentrated among program users. The pattern is consistent with women raising hormonal and gynaecological concerns with the female GP that they are less likely to raise with local male providers.

Pandemic Shocks and Unintended Healthcare Disruptions: Chronic Patients During COVID-19

with Claudio Lucifora & Antonio Russo

Empirical Economics, 2026 Article Link

This paper investigates the effects of pandemic shocks on outpatient care utilization among chronic patients aged 50 and older in Italy. We merge administrative data on outpatient services with information on excess deaths to proxy the severity of pandemic shocks during COVID-19. To account for confounding factors and individual-level unobserved heterogeneity, we implement an individual-level fixed-effects estimator. Our results indicate that excess deaths are associated with a decline in the probability of receiving at least one medical treatment per month. A heterogeneity analysis reveals that the reduction is more substantial for patients with comorbidities, who exhibit a larger prevalence-response elasticity, indicating that sicker patients are more sensitive to pandemic severity. These findings suggest that pandemic shocks influence healthcare-seeking behaviour even among patients previously thought to have inelastic demand.

Gender Mix Prescription: Is It the Cure for Job Satisfaction and Retention?

with Margherita Agnoletto

Labour Economics, 2025 Article Link

This paper investigates the effects of gender composition within general practices on overall job satisfaction, its associated lower-level domains, service quality and retention rates of general practitioners (GPs). Using data from the nationally representative Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life (MABEL) panel, we estimate an individual fixed-effects model and address potential endogeneity in several ways. We show that an increase in the female share of GPs within a practice positively influences overall job satisfaction and various well-being components, with female GPs driving the effects. However, increasing the female share negatively affects several domains of job satisfaction if it reduces gender diversity, highlighting the importance of maintaining a balanced gender composition within practices. To obtain an equivalent effect on overall job satisfaction, gross annual earnings would need to increase by approximately AU$406,400. Additionally, our findings show positive effects on retention intentions. Potential mechanisms include a greater understanding of work-life balance among colleagues, stronger workplace support, and reduced job-related stress.

Big Five Personality Traits and Retirement Decisions

with Claudio Lucifora

Labour, 2021 Article Link

We estimate the effect of the Big Five personality traits on the retirement decisions of individuals aged between 50 and 80 years in fourteen European countries, using wave 7 from the SHARE data. We investigate the probability of retirement and a measure of the distance between actual retirement and ordinary retirement age. Overall, we find that personality affects retirement decisions, and the effects are similar across gender. Openness to experience, conscientiousness and extraversion are generally associated with a delay in retirement decisions, whereas neuroticism anticipates the exit from the labour market.

From Awareness to Action: Help-Seeking and Femicides after Gender-Based Violence Campaigns in Italy

with Margherita Agnoletto Working paper

Awareness campaigns are among the most widely deployed policy responses to gender-based violence, yet systematic evidence on their behavioural effects remains scarce. This paper examines whether variation in campaign intensity around the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (November 25) affects help-seeking behaviour and femicide rates in Italy. We exploit the unusually high salience of the 2023 campaign in a difference-in-differences design that compares outcomes before and after November 25 across years of varying intensity. Helpline calls to the national 1522 anti-violence line increase by approximately 160 percent in the weeks following the high-intensity campaign, with the effect concentrated among non-victim callers. Femicides decline by approximately 61 percent during high-intensity campaign months. Event-study specifications reveal no differential pre-trends, and placebo tests yield null effects for alternative treatment years, supporting a causal interpretation of the estimates. These findings suggest that recurring awareness campaigns can be effective tools for gender-based violence prevention.

When Dads Can't Get on the Beers: The Positive Impact of COVID-19 on Parental Drinking Behaviour

with Susan J. Méndez, Susan Sawyer & Julie Moschion Working paper

We estimate the effect of COVID-19 restrictions on alcohol consumption among parents living in Victoria. We combine detailed drinking information from the Victorian Adolescent Health Cohort Study, quasi-random variation in survey timing around Victoria's first lockdown in March 2020, and a difference-in-differences design. We find that heavy drinking among fathers falls substantially: high-risk drinking declines by 26%, binge drinking drops by 28%, and peak single-occasion consumption decreases by approximately four standard drinks. Effects are entirely absent among mothers, concentrated among fathers of younger children, and grow larger under the second, longer lockdown. Descriptive evidence points to weekend drinking as the primary margin of adjustment, consistent with the removal of social occasions rather than financial hardship as the operative mechanism. These findings suggest that the structure of social opportunities shapes household drinking behaviour, and that policies intended to reshape daily routines can generate substantial reductions in alcohol consumption even when not explicitly designed for this target.