Welcome to my website!

I am a fourth year PhD candidate in Economics at Sant’Anna School of Advandes Studies, Pisa.

My research focuses on welfare state systems classification, labor market dynamics in care sectors and time use patterns in advanced capitalist economies.

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Publications

Costantini, E., Divella, M., Manicardi, C., & Rinaldini, M. (2025 forthcoming). Between empowering and risk: Organizational change and professional upskilling through digital health technologies. In V. Cirillo, M. Rinaldini, & M. Virgillito (Eds.), Technology and Work in Services. Vulnerable Workers under Automation and Digitalization. Palgrave Macmillan.

Cetrulo, A., Manicardi, C., & Moro, A. (2025 forthcoming). Automation in cleaning: Why dirty, invisible, and risky jobs will not be replaced by robots yet. In V. Cirillo, M. Rinaldini, & M. Virgillito (Eds.), Technology and Work in Services. Vulnerable Workers under Automation and Digitalization. Palgrave Macmillan.

Manicardi, C. (2023). Feminization of labor in Italy. A preliminary assessment, Sinappsi, XIII, (2), 8-24. [PDF]

Cirillo, V., Rinaldini, M., Virgillito, M.E., Divella, M., Manicardi, C., Massimo, F.S., Cetrulo, A., Costantini, E., Moro, A. and Staccioli, J. (2022). Case studies of automation in services, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. DOI: 10.2760/347087 [PDF]

Working papers

Manicardi, C., & Virgillito, M. E. (2025). Unpaid Working Time and Disproportionate Female Hazard: an Intersectionality Perspective (No. 2025/01). Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy. DOI: 10.57838/sssa/0v9f-0384 [PDF]

Work in progress

• Manicardi, C., Virgillito, M.E., Care Regimes and Time Allocation: an Event Study Analysis of the US Public Expenditure.

Abstract: This paper provides new evidence that public investments in education, healthcare and public welfare significantly influence individual time allocation. We analyze the United States care regime from 2004 to 2021 where the latter is subject, as a public expenditure component, to positive and negative phases, or events. By distinguishing between expansionary and recessionary events, we study the individual time allocation as affected by alternative phases of the regime of care using a diff-in-diff event study design that exploits that extreme public spending investments occur in spikes. Using representative samples from the American Time Use Survey and the US State \& Local Government Expenditure databases, we find that positive spikes in state and local expenditures cause increases in the waged working time for women and reduce the burden of domestic and care responsibilities. Conversely, period of fiscal austerity result in a gendered shift from paid to unpaid activities. These effects are large and highlight the role of institutional factors in shaping gender time inequalities and the need for gender budgeting at both recessionary and expansionary stages of the fiscal budget cycle.

• Manicardi, C., Virgillito, M.E., Care Regimes Revisited: Gender, Labor, and Inequality in the Era of Demographic and Familial Transformation.

Abstract: Why are care policies regaining momentum in the public discourse of late capitalist societies? What sociological and economic impacts arise from demographic trends like increasing life expectancy and declining fertility rates? How does the crisis of the nuclear family intersect with factors such as migration flows, the rise in female labor force participation, growing shares of population affected by disability and morbidity requiring care, and pressures from public budget cuts? How do emerging care demands translate into job creation within the formal labor market? Are these jobs well-paid and unionized, or do they reinforce the lower tail of the wage distribution, deepening job polarization and inequality? This article uses the notion of care regime as a heuristic device to address these questions, synthesizing insights of scholars relying on this framework across diverse fields – ranging from comparative political economy to feminist theory and empirical labor economics – into a cohesive research program, reviving care regime theory and contributing with an empirical application on the U.S.

• Manicardi, C., Basu, A., Sen, A., Wage Compression and Care Work in the US Post Pandemic Labor Market.

Long Abstract: Recent labor market research by Autor et al. (2023) documents unexpected wage compression in the US following the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly benefiting low-wage workers. This compression has been attributed to increased labor market tightness, which disproportionately improved the bargaining power of low-wage workers. However, it is unclear whether this wage compression affected all low-wage sectors equally, particularly care work (health, education, and social services), which faces unique labor market dynamics. Care work typically displays lower wage elasticity due to emotional attachment and industry-specific credentials that reduce outside options, a disproportionately female labor force with lower labor supply elasticity (Naidu and Carr, 2022), and persistently low wages due to the care penalty (Folbre et al., 2021; Gautham et al., 2024; Gautham and Folbre, 2024). These workers also experienced significant deterioration in working conditions during the pandemic (Rudolph et al., 2021). In this paper, we examine how post-pandemic labor market trends affected care workers and the role of this sector in shaping broader patterns of earnings inequality. We build on the work of Autor et al. (2023) by analyzing whether the post-pandemic wage compression applies specifically to care workers. We investigate potential heterogeneity within the low-wage workforce by examining the dynamics of hourly wages, quit rates, and labor market tightness in care sectors, comparing them to other low-wage occupations such as food and hospitality services – traditionally studied by labor economists (Card and Krueger, 2000; Dube et al., 2010). We expect additional factors beyond labor market tightness to contribute to quit dynamics and worker mobility in care sectors. We model the fundamental mechanisms at play through a theoretical frictional model with differential labor supply elasticity (with both a gender-component and industry-component related to required credentials and emotional attachment) and industry-specific wage penalties. We will then test this model’s implications by exploiting both cross-state and cross-sector variation in post-pandemic labor market tightness, as well as heterogeneity within low wage workers depending on demographics and labor supply elasticity.