Working Papers
"External Debt Servicing and Gender Inequality: Macroeconomic Evidence from Developing countries". With Elissa Braunstein (under review). [Working Paper]
This paper examines how public debt burdens affect gender inequality in developing countries. Using a panel of 85 developing countries over 1992–2022 and the Arellano-Bond difference GMM estimator, we estimate the effects of external public and publicly guaranteed debt service (as a share of exports) and debt stocks (as a share of GDP) on labor market, income, health, and education outcomes for women and men. We find that the burden of servicing debt matters more for gender equality than the level of debt. A one standard deviation increase in debt service reduces women’s employment by about 1.6% in the short run and 2.6% in the long run, with no significant effect on men’s employment. Higher debt service is also associated with declining health sector employment for both women and men, a long-run increase in maternal mortality of about 22%, and lower life expectancy. These effects are concentrated in years of spending-based austerity; without spending cuts, most adverse effects of debt service diminish and lose significance. IMF program participation has weaker and more mixed effects than austerity itself. The results point to public spending, and health systems in particular, as key channels through which debt burdens affect gender equality
"Monetary Tightening, Sectoral Dynamics, and Gendered Employment Outcomes in Developing Countries" (major revisions, Feminist Economics).[Working Paper]
This paper examines whether the employment costs associated with monetary policy are unevenly distributed between women and men in a sample of 75 developing countries between 2000 and 2022. Unanticipated monetary policy shocks are identified via a Taylor rule approach, and their gendered employment effects are estimated using local projections. Unanticipated monetary tightening reduces women’s and men’s employment by up to 0.2%, while monetary easing does not entail a statistically significant employment recovery. Monetary tightening also increases the share of working poor and own-account workers, suggesting that aggregate employment figures mask sectoral heterogeneities and understate the full employment costs. Women’s employment in developing countries is more protected from monetary tightening in the post-2000 period than earlier literature suggested, reflecting a shift into more protected service sector employment. However, their concentration in the retail sector exacerbates the gender ratio within services, a pattern that is distinct from high-income economies.
Dehn, M. and Needler, E. (2025). ”Diversity in Introductory Courses in Philosophy of Economics –A Study of Course Syllabi”. Journal of Economic Methodology.
[Published Version] [Working Paper Version]
Small, S.F., Dehn, M. and Beltran-Figueroa, L. (2025). “Understanding the Intellectual Traditions of Claudia Goldin’s Nobel Winning Work on Gender and its Context in Feminist Economics.” Review of Political Economy, 37:3, 1164-1185.
[Published Version] [Working Paper Version]
Braunstein, E. and Dehn, M. (2026). ”Who Pays the Price? Gender Inequality and Sovereign Debt”. UNDP EQUANOMICS report. [Link]
Dehn, M. 2025. ”Debt-for nature-swaps – one fix for two crises?”. Guest Post for HumanNature Blog. [Link]
Dehn, M., Needler, E. and Palka, J. 2022. ”Philosophy of economics”. Foundational text for Exploring Economics. [Link]
International Association for Feminist Economics, Cali. 2026.
Allied Social Sciences Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia. 2026
John Jay-New School Conference, New York City. 2026.
Allied Social Sciences Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco. 2025
Eastern Economic Association Conference, New York City. 2025.
International Association for Feminist Economics, Amherst. 2025.
Forum for Macroeconomic Modelling, Berlin. 2025.
International Association for Feminist Economics, Rome. 2024.
Special Issue Workshop Diversity in Philosophy of Economics, online. 2024.