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AbstractThe effects of paid parental leave policies on infant health have yet to be established. In this paper we investigate these effects by exploiting the introduction of California Paid Family Leave (PFL), the first program in the U.S. that specifically provides working parents with paid time off for bonding with a newborn. We measure health using the full census of infant hospitalizations in California and a set of control states, and implement a differences‐in‐differences approach. Our results suggest a decline in infant admissions, which is concentrated among those causes that are potentially affected by closer childcare (and to a lesser extent breastfeeding). Other admissions that are unlikely to be affected by parental leave do not exhibit the same pattern.

We analyse the content of Italian occupations operating in about 600 sectors with a focus on the dimensions that expose workers to contagion risks during the COVID-19 epidemics. To do so we leverage extremely detailed and granular information from ICP, the Italian equivalent of O*Net. We find that several sectors need physical proximity to operate: the workers employed in Italy in sectors whose physical proximity index is above the national average are more than 6.5 million (most of them in retail trade). Groups at risk of contagion and complications from COVID-19 (mainly male above the age of 50) work in sectors that are little exposed to physical proximity, currently under lockdown or can work remotely. The sectoral lockdowns put in place by the Italian Government in March 2020 seem to have targeted sectors who operate in physical proximity, but not those directly exposed to infections (the health industry is not subject to lockdown). Most workers who can operate from home have not been put under lockdown and are currently working. Therefore, the number of workers who are not in workplaces could be up to 3 million higher than those whose sector has been shutdown. ; This version: April 12, 2020

AbstractRecent technological changes have been characterized as "routine‐substituting" because they reduce demand for routine tasks and increase demand for analytical and service tasks. Little is known about how these changes have impacted immigration, or task specialization between immigrants and native‐born individuals. In this paper, we show that such technological progress has attracted immigrants who increasingly specialize in manual‐service occupations. We also suggest that openness to immigration attenuated the job and wage polarization faced by native‐born from technological changes. We explain these facts with a model of technological progress and endogenous immigration. Simulations show that unskilled immigration attenuates the drop in routine employment proceeding from technological change, enhances skill upgrading for native‐born and raises economy‐wide productivity and welfare.

Abstract
This paper proposes a new classification of occupations based on the extent to which they put workers at risk of being infected by aerial-transmitted viruses. We expand on previous work that mainly focused on the identification of jobs that can be done from home by providing a more nuanced view of infection risks: in particular, we identify jobs that, although impossible to be done from home, expose workers to a low risk of infection. Jobs that cannot be done from home and that present a high risk of infection are labelled 'unsafe jobs'. We then combine our classification of infection risk with a list of 'essential occupations' that have been carried out even during the most severe lockdown measures: this provides a taxonomy ranking jobs along two dimensions, one related to workers' health and the other related to economic conditions. Using both survey and administrative data, we show that this taxonomy successfully predicts outcomes along these two dimensions, such as sick leaves, COVID-19-related work injuries, recourse to short-time work (STW) schemes and work from home. We also find that unsafe jobs are very unequally distributed across different types of workers, firms and sectors. Workers who are more vulnerable economically (women, youngsters, low educated, immigrants and workers on fixed-term contracts) are more likely to hold unsafe jobs and therefore more at risk of suffering from the economic consequences of a prolonged pandemic. We finally discuss possible paths to reform social protection systems, so that they can better support workers during the labour market adjustments that are likely to be spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic.