Barbara Petrongolo

Barbara Petrongolo is an Italian economist, professor, researcher, and writer. She is currently a professor at Queen Mary University of London, Director of the Labour Economics Programme at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, and Co-editor of the Economic Journal which is world renowned for being one of the founding economic journals. Petrongolo previously worked at the London School of Economics, the Paris School of Economics and the Universidad Carlos III (Madrid). Her doctoral thesis was titled Job matching and unemployment: Applications to the UK labour market and international comparisons.

In 1997, Petrongolo became employed as an assistant professor in economics at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. Petrongolo later returned to the London School of Economics in 2001 as a lecturer in economics. Between 2009-2012, Petrongolo held the Chaire Ile de France at the Paris School of Economics. She then joined Queen Mary University of London in 2010 as a professor of economics, where she currently teaches.

"Gender Gaps and the Rise of the Service Economy" (2017) Petrongolo co-authored this research paper with L. Rachel Ngai. This paper looked at the post World War II era and how the female participation in the U.S. labour market has changed. More specifically, they looked at how structural transformation and marketization has increased female work hours and wages causing an increase in the role of services as well as an increase in female workforce participation.

The study found that the increase in female labour force participation was closely related to structural transformation and marketization and that the fall in male work has partially contributed to the rise in female work. Historically, men have had a comparative advantage in good-producing sectors such as manufacturing, construction, and utilities because men are better endowed with "brawn" skills. This was accompanied with women having a comparative advantage in the services sector because it required "brain" skills, not "brawn" skills. With a structural transformation causing the services sector to broaden, women were able to get more work hours. Secondly, women generally specialized in home production. It was suggested in the paper that home production activities and market services were close substitutes. Therefore as the service market expanded, women would shift out of home production and into the services sector. Petrongolo and Ngai found that marketization attracts women into the workforce while structural transformations creates the job openings that women need. These effects are able to partially explain the decrease in the gender wage gap and the increase in female workforce participation.

"The Economic Consequences of Family Policies: Lessons from a Century of Legislation in High-Income Countries" (2017) Petrongolo and Claudia Olivetti co-authored this paper together. The paper aimed to analyze the effects that family policies have on female workforce participation. The researchers studied the consequences that past policies have had on female workforce participation using tools such as parental leave and other forms of family aid, beginning from the end of the 19th century.

Petrongolo and Olivetti found that within the last century, labour markets have been changing in high-income nations. There has been an increase of females in the workforce which has led to a decrease in the gender wage gap. Petrongolo and Olivetti looked at events such as industrialization and demographic transitions and how they impacted women's workforce participation. Petrongolo and Olivetti found that by the beginning of the 21st century, most high-income nations have implemented some sort of parental leave and family benefit policies in hopes of increasing fertility and child development. They concluded that the most effective family policies to increase female workforce participation and decrease the gender wage gap, are policies that increase early childhood spending. Such policies focus on increasing spending of early education and childcare.