Rafael Lalive

In a recent published paper (joint with Christina Felfe), Rafael Lalive discusses how attending child care before age three affects child development later in life. Germany is an ideal setting to study this question because, in 2005, municipalities differ in terms of how much early care they offered and all municipalities were encouraged to increase the number of child-care places. In this setting, the researchers found that children whose parents are highly educated gain less than those with less educated parents. Child care improves language skills and motor skills of children who attend child care when it is most difficult to obtain, and child care improves socio-emotional skills for children attending child care when it is expanded. In a paper in progress (with Etienne Wasmer, Elisa Guglielminetti and Philippe Ruh), Rafael Lalive seeks to better understand how job seekers adapt search strategies as they stay unemployed longer The researchers have determined that job seekers find well paid jobs, and jobs located close to their homes, but, as the spell lengthens, accepted wages decline and commutes increase. These patterns seem consistent with job seekers running out of unemployment insurance, but unemployment insurance only raises wages but does not shorten commutes. A model that allows for search costs, in addition to unemployment insurance, can replicate the observed patterns. Search costs appear to be important drivers of how broadly job seekers look for jobs as their unemployment spells lengthen.

Mr Lalive’s main research interests are twofold. 1) He is working on the economic effects of reforms to public policy. Specifically, this research has focused on the effectiveness of active labour market programs in helping job seekers find jobs, on the role of financial incentives in unemployment insurance, on the effects of parental leave policies on fertility and return to work of mother of newborn children, on policies for disabled individuals and on the effects of environmental policies. 2) He is also interested in social economics, i.e. the importance of social interactions for education decisions and the role of social learning. His research has been published by major journals in economics such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of the European Economic Association, the Review of Economics and Statistics and also general science journals such as Science or PLOSone. Rafael Lalive holds a position as a Professor in Economics at University of Lausanne. He earned a PhD in labour economics from the University of Zurich and visited the Center for Labor Economics at UC Berkeley in the Spring of 2014 and the Tinbergen Institute in Amsterdam in the academic year 2002/03. He is a member of several networks (CEPR, CESifo, IFAU, IfW and IZA).