Advancement to Candidacy Presentation: “Transition to Fatherhood and Performance at Work”, Donovan Rasamoelison, University of California, Santa Barbara

Date and Time
Location
South Hall 1430

Speaker

Donovan Rasamoelison, University of California, Santa Barbara

Biography

Donovan Rasamoelison is a PhD student in economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests lie broadly in the area of applied microeconometrics, with a special interest in applying economic and econometric models to analyze natural experiments. His research primarily seeks to estimate the causal impacts of policies in fields such as labor and public economics, providing insights into policy effectiveness and economic behavior.

Event Details

Donovan will be presenting his Advancement to Candidacy paper, “Transition to Fatherhood and Performance at Work”. To access the Advancement paper, you must have an active UCSB NetID and password.

Abstract and JEL Codes

This paper investigates the short-run effects of childbirth on the work performance and productivity of fathers. Using a two-way fixed effects model with a novel dataset combining NBA players’ performance data and the birth dates of the players’ children, this study identifies the causal effects of childbirth by arguing that the timing of birth is an exogenous random shock to performance on the games played shortly before and after childbirth. The results indicate a decrease in total productivity postpartum, measured as total points scored per minute played, which is mainly driven by a decrease in performance on harder tasks (3-point shots) but not on easier tasks (2-point shots). Specifically, there is a negative and statistically significant decrease in the number of successful and attempted 3- point shots postpartum.

JEL Code: J01

Research Areas