About Me

I am a Research Economist at the Bank of Spain. I am also a Research Affiliate at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics.

I was previously a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Stone Centre at University College London (UCL) during the 2023-2024 academic year. I received my PhD in Economics from CEMFI under the supervision of Manuel Arellano. My primary research interests lie broadly in labor economics, firm dynamics, and applied econometrics.

You can contact me at micole.devera.work@gmail.com or micole.devera@bde.es.

[ Download CV here ]

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Research

Working Papers

• Firm-Level Productivity and Demand Shocks in Imperfectly Competitive Labor Markets: Implications for Wage Dynamics (JMP)
  [ Draft ]
  Abstract

  I build a novel framework to empirically disentangle productivity from demand shocks at the firm level and measure their pass-through to worker wages. Measuring the pass-through of firm-level shocks contributes to understanding how firms affect wage inequality and wage dynamics. My analysis leverages a unique Portuguese data set that combines matched employer-employee data, financial statements data, and firm-product information on quantities and prices. The productivity, demand, and labor market advantages processes are inferred from observed data. I find substantial cross-sectional heterogeneity across firms along these three dimensions. Moreover, these features of the firm evolve in rich, nonlinear ways. Most firms have highly persistent states for most shocks, but poor-performing firms with large positive shocks have much less persistent states. In an environment with wage adjustment costs, I find that wages are not adjusted in response to productivity shocks, whereas I estimate positive pass-through elasticities to demand shocks. There is suggestive evidence that pass-throughs of adverse demand shocks are larger than those of good ones. Moreover, the pass-through of good demand shocks is larger for firms with better positions in their respective labor markets.
• The Long Shadow of Labor Market Entry Conditions: Intergenerational Determinants of Mental Health
  with Javier García-Brazales and Jiayi Lin
  [ Draft ]
  Abstract

  What determines long-term mental health and its intergenerational correlation? Exploiting variation in unemployment rates upon labor market entry across Australian states and cohorts, we provide novel evidence that the mental health of daughters is affected by the labor market entry conditions of their parents. In particular, a one standard deviation shock to the unemployment rate upon parental labor market entry worsens daughters' mental health during adolescence by 13% of a standard deviation. This effect is accompanied by lower levels of satisfaction with their health, home, financial situation, and overall life. A mediation analysis suggests that a sizable proportion (24%) of the impacts on the descendants' mental health is explained by the worse mental health of their parents at mid-life. We do not detect any impact of parental labor market entry conditions among sons.
• Mass Reproducibility and Replicability: A New Hope
  with Abel Brodeur, Derek Mikola, Nikolai Cook, and 300+ others
  [ Draft ]
  Abstract

  This study pushes our understanding of research reliability by reproducing and replicating claims from 110 papers in leading economic and political science journals. The analysis involves computational reproducibility checks and robustness assessments. It reveals several patterns. First, we uncover a high rate of fully computationally reproducible results (over 85%). Second, excluding minor issues like missing packages or broken pathways, we uncover coding errors for about 25% of studies, with some studies containing multiple errors. Third, we test the robustness of the results to 5,511 re-analyses. We find a robustness reproducibility of about 70%. Robustness reproducibility rates are relatively higher for re-analyses that introduce new data and lower for re-analyses that change the sample or the definition of the dependent variable. Fourth, 52% of re-analysis effect size estimates are smaller than the original published estimates and the average statistical significance of a re-analysis is 77% of the original. Lastly, we rely on six teams of researchers working independently to answer eight additional research questions on the determinants of robustness reproducibility. Most teams find a negative relationship between replicators’ experience and reproducibility, while finding no relationship between reproducibility and the provision of intermediate or even raw data combined with the necessary cleaning codes.
• The Impact of Firm Performance on Macroeconomic Outcomes: Evidence from Serial Entrepreneurs
  with Sónia Félix, Sudipto Karmakar, and Petr Sedláček
  [ Draft ]
  Abstract

  Why are some firms more successful than others and how does this shape aggregate outcomes? To address these questions, we use unique administrative data, exploiting information on serial entrepreneurs (owners of multiple firms) as impersonations of business success. First, we document that serial entrepreneurs are three times more likely to own high-growth firms ("gazelles") and that their businesses disproportionately contribute to aggregate productivity growth, job creation and business dynamism. Second, we show that the success of serial entrepreneurs can largely be traced back to two key sources: their innate characteristics (primarily education and ability) and lower indebtedness of their firms.
• Game Changer: Impact of a Reading Intervention on Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills
  with Javier García-Brazales and Luz Rello
  [ Draft ]
  Abstract

  We evaluate a holistic reading intervention involving 600 third-grade students in Chilean schools catering to disadvantaged populations. The intervention features an adaptive computer game designed to identify and improve weaknesses in literacy and cognitive skills, and is complemented by a mobile library and advice to parents to increase student's interest and parental involvement. On one side, we find an improvement in performance on a nation-wide, standardized language test by 13% of a standard deviation. On the other side, we find that treated students are 10-30% of a standard deviation more likely to have higher academic aspirations, to believe that their performance is better than that of their peers and that courses are easy, and to have a more internal locus-of-control. Our results show that cognitive and non-cognitive skills can be changed through a short, light-touch, and cost-effective education technology intervention.

Publications

• Establishment Size and the Task Content of Jobs: Evidence from 46 Countries
  with Javier García-Brazales
  Economica, accepted
  [ Draft ]
  Abstract

  Using a mix of household- and employer-based survey data from 46 countries, we provide novel evidence that workers in larger establishments perform more non-routine analytical tasks, even within narrowly defined occupations. Moreover, workers in larger establishments rely more on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to perform these tasks. We also document a 15% raw wage premium that workers in larger establishments enjoy relative to their counterparts in smaller establishments. A mediation analysis shows that our novel empirical facts on the task content of jobs are able to explain between 5-20% of the establishment size wage premium, a similar fraction to what can be explained by selection of workers on education, gender, and age.
• Income Risk Inequality: Evidence from Spanish Administrative Records
  with Manuel Arellano, Stéphane Bonhomme, Laura Hospido, and Siqi Wei
  Quantitative Economics (13)4: 1747-1801, 2022
  [ DOI | Draft | Slides | Code ]
  Media coverage: El Confidencial [ 2021, 2022a, 2022b ], Cinco Días [ 2023 ]
  Abstract

  In this paper we use administrative data from the social security to study income dynamics and income risk inequality in Spain between 2005 and 2018. We construct individual measures of income risk as functions of past employment history, income, and demographics. We document that income risk is highly unequal in Spain: more than half of the economy has close to perfect predictability of their income, while some face considerable uncertainty. Income risk is inversely related to income and age, and income risk inequality increases markedly in the recession. These findings are robust to a variety of specifications, including using neural networks for prediction, and allowing for individual unobserved heterogeneity.

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Teaching

Teaching Assistant at CEMFI

• Econometrics with Manuel Arellano
  Winter 2020, 2021

Instructor at CEMFI

• Introduction to Stata for Undergraduate Summer Interns (3h course)
  Summer 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022
  [ Materials ]
• Introduction to R for Undergraduate Summer Interns (1.5h course)
  Summer 2019

Lecturer at Ateneo de Manila University

• EC102: Basic Economics, Agrarian Reform and Taxation
  First Semester 2015-2016, Intersession 2016-2017
• EC115: Introduction to Mathematical Economics
  Second Semester 2015-2016

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Public Goods

• Intro to Numerical Integration [ PDF (2024) ]
• Wage models with two-sided heterogeneity [ Slides (2023) ]
• Intro to Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods [ Slides (2021) ]
• Intro to the Newton-Raphson Algorithm with Matlab code [ PDF (2021) ]

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References

Manuel Arellano (Main Advisor) CEMFI arellano@cemfi.es	Nezih Guner CEMFI nezih.guner@cemfi.es
Dmitry Arkhangelsky CEMFI darkhangel@cemfi.es	Jan Stuhler UC3M jan.stuhler@uc3m.es