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Working papers

Maternity Benefits for Female Entrepreneurs: Effects on Business Outcomes and Family Health (with Fabrizio Core) 

(previously circulated as: Self-Employed Mothers: Child Penalties, Maternity Benefits, and Family Health)

SOLE 2026 (scheduled) ⋅ WEFI seminar series ⋅ IDB-ERBD-We-Fi Research Conference ⋅ INSEAD-Doriot Conference ⋅ Netspar Pension Day ⋅ HUN-REN CERS – Institute of Economics

We study the effects of motherhood and maternity benefits on small-scale female entrepreneurs. Using administrative microdata from the Netherlands, we document that childbirth reduces revenues by 26% in the quarter of birth and 12% in the long run. We then study the introduction of an unconditional maternity cash benefit. Exploiting eligibility by birth month, we find that eligible mothers reduce their business revenues further, but only in the first two years after childbirth, with no long-run effects. Reliance on formal daycare decreases, suggesting that eligible mothers spend more time with their child, leading to improvements in children’s health.

How does Life Expectancy Affect Wealth Accumulation and Labor Supply? Evidence from Genetic Testing
(previously circulated as: Household Finance under the Shadow of Cancer)

R&R American Economic Review

EFA 2023  ⋅ FIRS PhD session ⋅ Paris December Finance  ⋅ FMA ⋅ European Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society  ⋅ SAFE Household Finance Workshop⋅ Young Economist Symposium 2022 Yale ⋅ Annual Meeting of the German Finance Association 

Abstract: Life expectancy plays a key role in economic models of wealth accumulation, with important implications for economic growth. Empirically, the effects of life expectancy are hard to identify, since a lower life expectancy is typically correlated with bad current health. I overcome this challenge by exploiting genetic testing as an information shock to life expectancy. My sample consists of working-age adults who start their life with a 50% probability of having inherited a gene mutation causing Lynch syndrome (LS), a hereditary cancer syndrome. They undergo genetic testing to learn their mutation carrier status while they are still healthy. Conditional on the ex-ante probability of carrying the LS gene mutation, the result of genetic testing is independent of potential outcomes. To identify the causal effects of life expectancy, I estimate the differences in outcomes following genetic testing between people who test positive (mutation carriers) and those who test negative (non-carriers) using detailed administrative data. I find that life expectancy has a positive effect on financial wealth accumulation among working-age adults, in large part due to a positive effect on labor supply and household income. Other less-liquid wealth elements such as housing wealth are unaffected. Using a baseline of untested individuals, I also find that increases and decreases in life expectancy lead to opposite-signed effects on financial wealth accumulation.

Health Risk and Economic Value: Quantifying the Insurance, Financial, and Fiscal Implications of Reducing Disease Burden (with Julio Crego, Jens Kvaerner and Luc Renneboog)
Previously circulated as The Economic Value of Eliminating Diseases

R&R Review of Financial Studies

ESWC 2025 ⋅ EEA 2023 ⋅ IAAE 2023 ⋅ Spanish Finance Forum ⋅ Tilburg University ⋅ ODISSEI/Statistics Netherlands

Abstract: We estimate the causal effects of 334 different types of health shocks on medical expenses, mortality, disability, labor market participation, labor earnings, and the need for nursing home care using detailed data on 6.9 million people diagnosed by medical specialists between 2013 and 2017. We quantify the benefits of eliminating diseases with distinct consequences for people of different social strata by incorporating the estimates into a standard life-cycle model. Our results reveal substantial heterogeneity in welfare gains by types of disease for different people. We discuss the potential implications of our results for the financing of medical research. 

We created a Dashboard to present all empirical results in the paper (weok in progress, any feedback welcome).

Higher Order Income Risk and the Business Cycle: Evidence From the Netherlands (with Giuseppe Floccari)
R&R Journal of Macroeconomics (GRID Special Issue)

Abstract: Using population administrative data for the Netherlands (1999-2022), we study time-series and cross-sectional variation in earnings levels and growth. Earnings inequality dynamics differ sharply by gender: men see a widening from 1999 to 2015 driven by declines at the bottom, while women exhibit lower-tail compression, partly linked to hours worked, and strong gains at the top. We also estimate the business-cycle exposure of the full earnings growth distribution by extending the standard beta approach to quantile betas: We estimate the sensitivity of different quantiles to variations in GDP growth and map our estimates into quantile-based dispersion (P90-P10), Kelley's skewness, and Crow-Siddiqui kurtosis measures by gender, age, and permanentincome (PI) rank. Skewness is strongly procyclical and it is the main driver of countercyclical income risk. Business-cycle sensitivity is a tail phenomenon: medians are nearly acyclical, whereas the 10th and 90th percentiles are strongly procyclical, especially at the bottom and at the top of the PI distribution. Consistently, tail movements explain most cyclical variation in mean earnings growth (mean betas).

PUblications

Individuals with Lynch syndrome have similar survival as the general population, but lower than family members without Lynch syndrome (with Maartje Nielsen, Anja Wagner, Sanne W. Bajwa-ten Broeke, Fonnet E. Bleeker, and Monique E. van Leerdam)

Gastroenterology (Research Letter)

E-MAIl: karpati (at) ese.eur.nl
ADDRESS: Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA Rotterdam, the Netherlands