Ashley Wong

Pension Caregiver Credits

During their visit at CESifo, Francesca Truffa and Ashley Wong will work on several ongoing projects in the areas of labor, gender, and innovation economics. In a project with Fabio Blasutto, they are investigating the effect of pension caregiver credits on the gender gap in labor supply and retirement income. They are using administrative German social security data to analyze a 2001 pension insurance reform that introduced additional caregiver credits for working mothers with children between the ages of 3 and 10. In another project, they will use Dutch microdata to assess the role of motherhood and the impacts of maternity leave policies on female-owned businesses. Finally, they also have ongoing work that exploits a university admissions policy change in the United States to study how increasing gender diversity at universities can impact research topics and the recognition of female-authored work.

Ashley Wong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Tilburg University. Her research focuses on labor and gender economics with interests in topics of diversity and innovation. She received her PhD in Economics from Northwestern University in 2022. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). She is currently an invited researcher at J-PAL’s Science for Progress Initiative (SfPI).

Francesca Truffa is a Lazear Liang Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Her research focuses on labor and innovation with a particular interest in topics of gender diversity and inequality. In July 2024, she will join the Ross School of Business at University of Michigan as Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy. She received her PhD in Economics from Northwestern University in 2022. She is currently an invited researcher at J-PAL’s Science for Progress Initiative (SfPI).