Employee Profile

Annika Bacher

Assistant Professor

Department of Economics

Image of Annika Bacher

Biography

Annika is an Assitant Professor of Economics at BI Norwegian Business School. Her main research interests are Quantitative Macroeconomics, in particular Household Finance, Labor Markets, and Family Economics.

For more information, please visit her personal webpage.

Area of Expertise

Publications

Bacher, Annika (2024)

The Gender Investment Gap over the Life Cycle

The Review of financial studies, Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhae068 - Full text in research archive

Single women invest less in risky assets than do single men. This paper analyzes the determinants of the “gender investment gap” based on a structural life-cycle framework. The model can rationalize the gender investment gap without gender heterogeneity in preferences. Rather, lower deterministic income and larger household sizes shift the composition of single women toward poorer households that invest less risky (composition effect). Additionally, future outcomes of both variables (which cannot easily be controlled for in regressions) make single women more vulnerable to financial shocks and decrease their optimal equity share even conditional on state variables (policy effect).

Bacher, Annika; Grübener, Philipp & Nord, Lukas (2024)

Joint search over the life cycle

Journal of Monetary Economics, 150, s. 1-24. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103696 - Full text in research archive

This paper provides evidence that the added worker effect – labor force entry upon spousal job loss – is stronger for young than old households. Using a life cycle model of two-member households in a frictional labor market, we study whether this age-dependency is driven by heterogeneous needs for or availability of spousal insurance. Our framework endogenizes asset and human capital accumulation, as well as arrival rates of job offers, and is disciplined against U.S. micro data. Counterfactuals show a strong complementarity across both margins: A large added worker effect requires both high spousal earnings potential relative to the primary earner and limited access to other means of self-insurance. Together, both margins account for the observed age differential in the added worker effect. The model predicts substantial crowding out of spousal labor supply responses by unemployment benefit extensions among young households, in line with their stronger insurance motive.

Academic Degrees
Year Academic Department Degree
2022 European University Institute PhD
Work Experience
Year Employer Job Title
2022 - Present BI Norwegian Business School Assistant Professor of Economics (tenure-tack)