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Working papers

• “Tracing the Genetic Footprints of the UK National Health Service” with Nicolau Martin-Bassols, Pietro Biroli, Massimo Anelli, Stephanie von Hinke, and Silvia Mendolia. January 2026. Submitted

• “Global Levels and Trends in Child Discipline: Evidence from 88 Countries, 2005-2023” with John Egyir, Katherina Thomas, Elisabetta Aurino. February 2026. Submitted

• “Fertility, Genes, and the Sexual Revolution” with Nicola Barban and Marco Francesconi. April 2025. R&R Journal of the European Economic Association
  • Previous version: “Gene-Environment Effects on Female Fertility” (2021) CEPR Discussion Paper No. 16603
  • Research supported by the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant
• “Unveiling Shadows: The Impact of Unemployment on Child Maltreatment” with Daniel Brown. February 2024. [In preparation for submission]
  • Previous version: “Child Maltreatment, Unemployment, and Safety Nets”. January 2020. SSRN Working Paper Series, No. 3543987.
  • Media coverage: RES 2019, ITV, International Business Times, Oxford University News.

Selected work in progress

• “The Diffusion of Authoritarian Parenting in Africa” with Alberto Ciancio, Giulia La Mattina, and Luca Maria Pesando. [Draft available soon]

• “High Temperature and Harsh Parenting” with Philipp Anthony Naß, and Filippo Pavanello. [Draft available soon]

• “The Heterogeneous Impact of Automation on Older Workers” with Massimo Anelli, Pietro Biroli, Silvia Mendolia, and Yannick Reichlin. [Draft available soon]

• “Children with Disabilities: Parental Labour-Market Penalties Worldwide” with Nicoletta Balbo, Francesco De Luca, Giorgio Nocerino and Silvia Palmaccio. [Draft available soon]

• “Public Health Insurance Slows Epigenetic Aging in Children” with Martin-Bassols, Pietro Biroli, and Lauren L. Schmitz. [Draft available soon]

• “Genetically Informed Estimation of Marginal Returns to Education” with Pietro Biroli, Tomeu Lopez-Nieto Veitch, and Rodrigo Pinto. [Analysis stage]

• “The Intergenerational Impact of Gestational Exposure to the National Health Service in the UK” with Genevieve Jeffrey and Alistair McGuire. [Analysis stage]

• “Children by Choice, Not Chance: Family Planning Associations and Fertility in Britain” with Nicola Barban, Marco Francesconi, Stephanie von Hinke, and Sara Tozzi. [Analysis stage]

• “Unilateral Divorce and Harsh Parenting: Evidence from East Germany” with Luca Bagnato, and Annachiara Mariani. [Analysis stage]

• “The impact of direct and indirect exposure to child maltreatment and social care on educational and labour market outcomes” with Dan Anderberg, Arnaud Chevalier, and Greta Morando. [Analysis stage]

Publications

• “A Research Note on Education, Teenage Births and The Role of Genetic Propensities” with Selin Köksal, Nicola Barban, and Marco Francesconi. July 2025. Accepted at Demography

• “Status (In)Consistency in Education and Violent Parenting Practices Towards Children”, with Luca Pesando, Giulia La Mattina and Alberto Ciancio. Social Science & Medicine, 2024, 116954.
  • “IZA version”
  • Research supported by the STICERD Research Grant
• “Does unemployment worsen babies’ health? A tale of siblings, maternal behaviour and selection.” with Barry McCormick and Catia Nicodemo. Journal of Health Economics. 2022, Vol. 83, 102601.
  • Media coverage: RES 2018

• “The effect of education on spousal education: A genetic approach” with Nicola Barban, Sonia Oreffice, and Climent Quintana-Domeque. Labour Economics. 2021, Vol. 71, 102023.

• Niaz Asadullah, Elisabetta De Cao, Fathema Zahura Khatun, and Zahra Siddique “Measuring gender attitudes using list experiments”. Journal of Population Economics. 2021, Vol. 34, Pages 367-400.

• De Cao Elisabetta and Giulia La Mattina “Does maternal education reduce female genital cutting?”. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings. 2019, Vol. 109, Pages 100-104. Media coverage: El Pais, LSEnews

• De Cao Elisabetta and Clemens Lutz “Sensitive survey questions: Measuring attitudes regarding female genital cutting through a list experiment”. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics. 2018, Vol. 80, No. 5, Pages: 871–92. Media coverage: RES 2015

• De Cao Elisabetta, Marloes Huis, Samson Jemaneh and Robert Lensink “Community conversations as a strategy to change harmful traditional practices against women”. Applied Economics Letters. 2017, Vol. 24, No. 2, Pages 72-74.

• De Cao Elisabetta “The height production function from birth to age two”. Journal of Human Capital. 2015, Vol. 9, No. 3, Pages 329-363.

• Arpino Bruno, Elisabetta De Cao and Franco Peracchi “Using panel data for partial identification of human immunodeficiency virus prevalence when infection status is missing not at random”. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society). 2014, Vol. 177, Part 3, Pages 578-606.

• De Cao Elisabetta, Emilio Zagheni, Alessia Melegaro and Piero Manfredi “The relative importance of frequency of contacts and time of exposure for the spread of directly transmitted infections”. Biostatistics. 2014, Vol. 15, No. 3, Pages 470-483.

• De Cao Elisabetta, Alessia Melegaro, Rogier Klok and Maarten Postma “Optimizing assessments of the epidemiological impact of pediatric immunization with PCV13 using dynamic transmission modeling”. PLoS ONE. 2014, Vol. 9, No. 4:e89415.

• Mark H. Rozenbaum, Elisabetta De Cao and Maarten J. Postma “Cost-effectiveness of pertussis booster vaccination in the Netherlands”. Vaccine. 2012, Vol. 30, No. 50, Pages 7327-31.

• Mark H. Rozenbaum, Elisabetta De Cao, Tjalke A. Westra and Maarten J. Postma “Dynamic models for health economic assessments of pertussis vaccines: what goes around comes around”. Expert Review of Vaccines. 2012, Vol. 11, No. 12, Pages 1415-1428.

Policy reports / Other

• Elisabetta De Cao and Malte Sandner “The potential impact of the COVID-19 on child abuse and neglect: The role of childcare and unemployment” VOXEU May 2020

• Stichting Gezamenlijke Evaluaties, “MFS-II Evaluations - Joint Evaluations of the Dutch Co-Financing System 2011-2015 - Country Report Ethiopia” Partos. July 2015.