About Me
Dr Mimosa Distefano is a research economist at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics (LSE). She is also affiliated with the Rockwool Foundation Berlin. She obtained her PhD in Economics at University College London (UCL). Her fields of interest are Labor, Personnel and Urban Economics. Her research examines how firms and firm-specific shocks affect local labor markets and workers’ career paths.
Job market paper
Female-targeted hiring subsidies, firm learning, and women's employment
Women often struggle to re-enter employment after career breaks, possibly because employers are uncertain about their productivity. We study whether hiring subsidies help firms overcome this uncertainty and hire from this group. Exploiting an Italian policy that temporarily cut payroll taxes for women hired from non-employment, we find that firms persistently hire more women with career breaks, including mothers, following subsidy adoption. Consistent with employer learning about target-group productivity, firms with better initial matches later hire more from this group. Subsidized workers also show stronger labor-market attachment. These findings suggest demand-side interventions can complement supply-side policies in addressing gender gaps.
