Browsing by Author "Brilli, Ylenia"

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Birth Weight, Neonatal Intensive Care Units, and Infant Mortality: Evidence from Macrosomic Babies
(2017-09) Brilli, Ylenia; Restrepo, Brandon J.; Dept. of Economics, University of Gothenburg
Using a regression discontinuity design, this study estimates the effect of extra medical care on the short-run health of babies born at the high end of the birth weight distribution. Consistent with the notion that neonatal treatment decisions are guided by a rule of thumb when assigning medical care to macrosomic newborns, we find evidence of a large discontinuous jump in the likelihood of being admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) as the 5000-gram cutoff is crossed from below. The resulting plausibly exogenous variation in medical care in the vicinity of the 5000-gram cutoff identifies the health effect of additional medical care. Parametric and non-parametric regressions reveal that being born above the 5000-gram cutoff increases the probability of NICU admission by about 30% and decreases the risk of infant mortality by about 130% relative to sample means below the 5000-gram cutoff. The importance of the substantial health gains associated with extra medical care in the macrosomic patient population is likely to grow over time since maternal obesity, a major risk factor for macrosomia, is on the rise.
Does increasing compulsory education decrease or displace adolescent crime? New evidence from administrative and victimization data
(2016-10) Brilli, Ylenia; Tonello, Marco; Dept. of Economics, University of Gothenburg
This paper estimates the contemporaneous effect of education on adolescent crime by exploiting the implementation a reform that increases the school leaving age in Italy by one year. We find that the Reform increases the enrollment rate of all ages, but decreases the offending rate of 14-year-olds only, who are the age group explicitly targeted by the Reform. The effect mainly comes from natives males, while females and immigrants are not affected. The Reform does not induce crime displacement in times of the year or of the day when the school is not in session, but it increases violent crimes at school. By using measures of enrollment and crime, as well data at the aggregate and individual level, this paper shows that compulsory education reforms have a crime reducing effect induced by incapacitation, but may also lead to an increase of crimes in school facilities plausibly due to a higher students concentration.
Mother’s Time Allocation, Child Care and Child Cognitive Development
(2017-02) Brilli, Ylenia; Dept. of Economics, University of Gothenburg
This paper analyzes the effects of maternal employment and non-parental child care on child cognitive development, taking into account the mother's time allocation between leisure and child-care time. I estimate a behavioral model, in which maternal labor supply, non-parental child care and time allocation decisions are considered to be endogenous choices of the mother, and the child cognitive development depends on maternal and non-parental child care. The results show that the mother's child-care time is more productive than non-parental child care, at any age of the child. This implies that a reduction in a mother's child-care time, induced by a higher labor supply, may not be compensated for by the increase in non-parental child care use, and, hence, may lead to a negative effect on the child's cognitive ability. The estimation of a counterfactual model where a mother can only allocate her time between child care and work shows that neglecting the mother's time allocation choice between child care and leisure overestimates the productivity of a mother's time with the child.