Research and policy work
Working papers, published articles, and the reports I've written for international organisations. The policy work is where most of my time has gone, and it's the part I'd point a new client to first.
Working papers
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2026
The effect of AI adoption on the demand for personality traits
Abstract
Using text retrieval methods on 11.7 million online job vacancies (2017–2022), I find that 72% of vacancies require at least one Big Five personality trait. Extraversion is the most common (44%), followed by Conscientiousness (34%) and Openness (30%). After accounting for occupational change, personality demands are mostly stable over time. Vacancies requiring AI skills are 7.2 percentage points more likely to demand Openness, and firms increase their demand for Openness by 3.6 percentage points across all subsequent hiring after they adopt AI for the first time — suggesting that as firms adopt AI they increasingly value creativity and adaptability, well beyond the AI roles themselves.
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2026
The value of personality
Abstract
Jobs that mention personality traits offer 4.6% lower wages on average, which raises a paradox: why advertise for traits that are penalised? Using 11.7 million UK job postings (2017–2022), I test four explanations — correlation with low-pay job characteristics, compensating differentials, linguistic intensity, and demographic targeting. Occupation fixed effects absorb the most, but significant penalties remain. Penalties are larger in high-skill occupations, smaller in female-dominated roles, and rise sharply with the intensity of the language used. Employers appear to use trait language for several purposes at once rather than one.
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2026
The effectiveness of formalisation policies in Latin America
Abstract
The first comprehensive meta-analysis of formalisation policies in Latin America: 79 impact evaluations, 527 estimates, interventions from 1990 to 2020, including Spanish-language studies and unpublished government reports that earlier reviews missed. Formalisation policies mostly work, and adverse effects are rare (5.1% of estimates) — but publication bias substantially reduces effect sizes once corrected. Active labour market policies, information campaigns and labour inspections raise formality; social protection programmes with activation components produce the largest earnings effects but barely move formality at all. Benefits strengthen over time, and multi-component interventions outperform single-component ones.
Policy work
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2025–26
Labour market informality in Costa Rica
A diagnostic of informal employment for the national formalisation framework: a review of a decade of studies and legal instruments, an analysis of how informal employment has moved across demographic and territorial lines using household survey microdata, and econometric models of its structural determinants. Recommendations aligned with ILO Recommendation 204 and the FORLAC 2.0 strategy.
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2022
Future of work, emerging sectors and the potential for transition to formality
Where new formal jobs could come from in the green economy, the platform economy and the care economy — and what it would take for them to be decent ones.
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2021
Old age work and income security in middle income countries
How prepared people are for the move from work to retirement in middle-income countries, built on a new comparative database and a work-to-retirement preparedness index.
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2024
Unleashing SMEs' potential to scale up
Co-authored report on what holds small firms back from growing: econometric analysis, and an assessment of machine learning methods for predicting firm growth from firms' own websites.
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2023
Argentina labour market outlook bulletin
Analysis and writing on productivity, employment trajectories and income conditions, for the joint ILO–ECLAC bulletin on the Argentine labour market.
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2021
World Employment and Social Outlook 2021: the role of digital labour platforms
Contributor to the flagship report: survey data and comparative wage analysis for platform workers in Chile, Mexico, Argentina, India and the United States, and a dataset on online platforms.
Published articles
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2018
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2020
NEETs' labour market transitions: a survey for Argentina
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2020
Unemployment duration in Argentina: a dynamic analysis, 2003–2018
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2018
Asymmetric impacts of the economic cycle on unemployment in Argentina