Ronza, Carla (2021) Essays in applied economics. [Tesi di dottorato]

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This work consists of two chapters, respectively investigating the role of women as policy maker and consumer's behaviour under uncertainty. The first chapter contributes to the literature on whether gender matters in politics. Specifically, it focuses on Italian municipalities and analyzes whether female presence in municipal council affects government stability. To address potential endogeneity concern regarding women in leadership positions, the analysis relies on two events far apart in time determining, respectively, an exogenous drop and an exogenous increase in the share of female councillors. Government stability is measured exploiting early termination episodes: while the statutory duration of the city council legislature is five years, at least since 2000, anticipated elections can be called because of well defined reasons. Thus, focusing on early terminations due to political motivations, it is possible to investigate whether a change in the number of women has any effect on the intensity of political disagreement among local policymakers. Findings show that a larger share of females among councillors reduces the probability of early termination of local governments for political reasons. The estimated effect is obtained controlling for a variety of councillors' characteristics (such as education, age, and occupation) and for the municipality level fixed effect. It does not hold when early terminations do not depend on councillors' behaviour and is reinforced when female councillors interact with a female Mayor. Taken together, results suggest more willingness of females to settle disagreements and foster cooperation. The second chapter contributes to the literature investigating the existence and intensity of precautionary savings. Despite being a long-standing subject of analysis in the consumption-saving literature, the impact of uncertainty on household behaviour is still a relevant and debated topic. The study identifies changes in consumption led by the precautionary motive first relying on the unexpected increase in income uncertainty following the 2008 financial crisis: being fueled by uncertainty, precautionary saving motive should be in place in the consumption choices that followed the 2008 crisis. Secondly, given that the intensity of precautionary savings hinges on consumer's attitude towards risk, to further bring out the precautionary motive, differences in risk attitude linked to family structure are exploited. In fact, since scholars found parenthood to increase individuals' risk-aversion, precautionary motive should be stronger in households with dependent children. Hence, the observed difference in consumption choices between households with and without children, before and after the 2008 crisis, should accurately identify the precautionary saving motive. The analysis uses data of the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW). Results indeed show that the presence of dependent children depresses the nondurable consumption expenditure during the crisis; this evidence outlines the relevance of the precautionary saving motive in agents' consumption-saving decisions and, consequently, the importance of public policies aimed at reducing individuals' risk.

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