Working papers

Soft Negotiators or Modest Builders? Why Women Earn Lower Real Estate Returns (with Laurent Bach and Paolo Sodini)
R&R at the Journal of Finance

Using repeat-sales data on apartments in Sweden, we estimate the gender gap in real estate returns. We find that transactions executed by women earn 2 percentage points (pp) lower returns compared to those executed by men, which narrows down to less than 0.5 pp once renovations are taken into account. This residual gender gap is fully explained by the fact that women are less likely to select into real estate-relevant occupations and are older on average. We cannot confirm that the gender gap stems from men’s higher ability to either time the market or negotiate aggressively.

Tax Subsidies and Housing Affordability (with Francois Koulischer and Ulf von Lilienfeld-Toal)

We show in a general equilibrium model that the incidence of tax subsidies intended to enhance housing affordability depends on four parameters: the elasticity of supply, the elasticity of demand, the distribution of housing ownership, and the distribution of housing consumption. We estimate these parameters with administrative data on real estate transactions and survey data on household balance sheets in Luxembourg. Using kinks in the taxes on transactions and on new constructions as a source of exogenous variation, we find that the top and bottom 10% of households by real estate wealth capture respectively 26% and 3% of the surplus from housing tax subsidies.

Wealth, savings, and returns over the life cycle: the role of education

This paper studies the effect of education on wealth and wealth accumulation over the life cycle. The analysis relies on an administrative panel that reports educational attainment and detailed information on assets and liabilities of Swedish residents. To identify the causal effect of education, I employ three alternative identification strategies which rely on controlling for predetermined family background and ability, within-siblings variation in educational attainment, and a compulsory schooling reform. I find that education has a positive, large, and long-lasting effect on net worth. I further show that it affects all balance sheet components and that these effects vary over the life cycle. Finally, I document that the differences in wealth are driven by both higher savings and higher portfolio returns among the more educated, although their relative importance varies over time. My results have implications for theoretical work on optimal consumption-saving behavior and portfolio choice, as well as for fiscal and social security policy. Overall, the findings suggest that considering only wage returns to education greatly understates its economic implications.

Gender Differences in Wealth and the Role of Financial Literacy

This paper seeks to understand how differences in financial literacy between women and men are related to the differences in their financial wealth. By using Dutch Central Bank Household Survey, this study shows that women are, on average, less knowledgeable about basic financial concepts and that households whose financial decisions are taken by women tend to have less financial wealth. The results of the decomposition of the gender wealth differential suggest that between 20% and 50% of the difference in financial wealth can be accounted for by differences in financial literacy and that its role is higher for lower levels of wealth.

Publications

Peer effects in stock market participation: Evidence from immigration (with Thomas Y. Mathä and Michael Ziegelmeyer)
Review of Income and Wealth, 70: 1060-1088 (2024)

Here you can find the Online Appendix and the replication package.

This paper studies how peers’ financial behaviour affects individuals’ own investment choices. To identify the peer effect, we exploit the composition of the Luxembourg population and use the differences in stock market participation across various immigrant groups to study the effect on stock market participation of natives. We find that stock market participation of immigrant peers has a sizeable effect on that of natives and that social learning is one of the channels through which this peer effect occurs. However, social learning alone does not account for the entire effect. Social utility might, therefore, also play an important role in peer effects transmission.

Ongoing research projects

Intermediation in Household Finance: Competition and Welfare (with Paolo Sodini and Jan Starmans)
Herding in Financial Markets (with Alexander Ljungqvist and Paolo Sodini)

Policy work

Wealth and Gender in Europe: Report for the European Commission Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers (with Eva Sierminska)
In media: Luxemburger Wort
The Luxembourg Household Finance Consumption Survey: Results From the 2nd Wave (with Thomas Y. Mathä and Michael Ziegelmeyer)