PhD Defence of Silvia Garcia Mandicó

This thesis examines how social insurance affects the labor supply of program beneficiaries and their families. The second and third chapters estimate the labor supply responses of disability insurance (DI) claimants and their spouses, respectively, to reductions in program generosity in the Netherlands.

Chapter 4 analyses the extent to which incentives generated by pensions in Spain impact on the retirement decisions of both pension scheme enrollees and their spouses.

Chapter 5 evaluates the success of national health insurance in Ghana in protecting households from the economic consequences of illness. In particular, it assesses whether the provision of formal insurance helps households avoid pulling kids out of school and putting them to work to cope with medical expenses and lost earnings of a sick adult.

About the author

Silvia Garcia Mandicó (1990) obtained a bachelor’s degree in Economics in 2012 at the Pompeu Fabra University followed by a master’s degree in International Economics (Erasmus University Rotterdam). She completed her MPhil in Economics at the Tinbergen Institute, and joined in 2015 the Health Economics group at the Erasmus School of Economics as a PhD candidate. She worked under the supervision of Professor Owen O’Donnell and Dr Pilar Garcia-Gómez.

Alongside her PhD, she worked on the NBER International Social Security Project. Since November 2018, she worked as a consultant for the World Bank, where she was involved in the set up of an impact evaluation in collaboration with the Nigerian Primary Health Care Development Agency and the Ministry of Health.