Caterina Mauri

Forthcoming at Scientific Reports: December 2025

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-31650-6

This paper presents new evidence suggesting that the relationship between loneliness and social connectedness is regulated

by individual social connectedness set points, i.e. levels of social connectedness that individuals consider satisfactory. Using

data from the European Union Loneliness Survey, I find that loneliness exhibits a kinked relationship with

connectedness: It decreases linearly when connectedness is below individual set points but remains consistently low regardless

of additional social contact once this threshold is reached. 

I co-edited this Springer book , published in November 2024, with Sylke V. Schnepf and Béatrice d'Hombres

The book is freely downloadable here.

Loneliness, often referred to as the ‘epidemic of the 21st century’, has emerged as a grave public health concern. For years, a lack of comprehensive European cross-national data hindered a thorough examination of this issue. In 2022, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre conducted the inaugural EU Loneliness Survey, covering around 30,000 individuals in 27 European nations. The book sheds light on who is most affected by loneliness, identifies contributing experiences and behaviours, addresses the stigmatisation of loneliness and discusses its societal impact.

This paper won the 2025 Giorgio Rota Best Paper Award 

A version of this paper is published in the Quaderni Giorgio Rota.

The radio revolution of the 1920s dramatically expanded access to entertainment and news, facilitating information flow and making knowledge exchange considerably cheaper. It also pro- foundly transformed markets for live and recorded music and redefined the labor market for musi- cians. Over less than a decade the number of musicians in the US increased by almost 36%. Radio broadcasting created a national market for music that made some musicians wealthy and brought music to places that had previously experienced little of it.

Joint with Karol Borowiecki

Published: 22 September 2023

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10824-023-09481-y

Creative workers strive to achieve success and influence by producing original output. In this paper we define and measure originality and influence, based on a new model of style. We apply the methodology to Western classical music composed since the 15th century, and test it using extensive data on the content of musical compositions, popular success, and biographical information. We find that more original composers tend to be more influential upon the work of their later peers and more successful with present-day audiences. A positive association between originality and influence also holds across works by a given composer.

Submitted for peer review

Single-person households have become the predominant household type across devel-

oped nations, with pronounced growth among working-age adults. This study examines

how living alone affects relative mortality risk across adulthood, investigating variation

by age, sex, and cause of death. Using Belgian census data linked to mortality records

for adults aged 25+, I find that living alone is associated with a 22% increase in all-

cause mortality for the 2011 cohort, up from 7% in the 2001 cohort. Relative mortality

risks peak during middle adulthood (ages 45-49), then decline progressively with age,

becoming negligible among those 85+. In both cohorts, men experience substantially

larger mortality penalties than women and external causes of death show the strongest

association with living alone, particularly in midlife, while cancer mortality shows min-

imal associations.

This paper studies intra-household inequality around the turn of the 20th century in the United States using household surveys conducted in 1888, 1917-1919, and 1935-1936. In the space of a few decades electricity and a range of household appliances diffused rapidly among American households. These technological changes transformed housework by making old tasks obsolete or much easier while making new comforts possible.

Joint with Alexander Wolf

Published: 09 October 2020

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10824-020-09395-z

Women and men differ in their tastes for the performing arts. Gender differences have been shown to persist after accounting for socio-economic factors. This paper uses this difference to shed light on how decisions on arts consumption are made in households. Based on relatively recent theoretical developments in the literature on household decision making, we use three different so- called distribution factors to show for the first time that the relative bargaining power of spouses affects their arts consumption.

Using a sample from the US Current Population Survey, which includes data on the frequency of visits to cultural activities, we regress attendance on a range of socio-economic variables using a count data model. The distribution factors consistently affect attendance by men at events such as the opera, ballet and other dance performances, which are more frequently attended by women than by men. We conclude that more powerful men attend such events less frequently.

Joint with Roberto Zanola

A large body of literature has shown that art appreciation depends on the context in which art is experienced as well as on individual characteristics of the observer. In this study we assess how liking rankings of Picasso paintings are revised upon revelation of price information and how this effect differs between individuals. Previous literature on the impact of monetary contextual information on liking ratings of art has focused on priming individuals in such a way that they would not be confronted with the fact that their answers are being influenced (Lauring et al., 2016). This paper uses data from a survey in which participants are asked to rank a set of 8 paintings and given the chance to revise the ranking upon revelation of price information. Results showed a significant effect of auction prices on the direction of the revision. Rankings are found to be revised in the direction suggested by the ranking implied by auction prices. Certain individual characteristics such as family background and respondents’ art attendance moderate this effect.

Joint with Vlegels, J. and Ysebaert, W.

https://journals.openedition.org/brussels/1721

This article is aimed at describing the Cultural and Creative (CC) economy in the Brussels Capital Region (BCR) and it seeks to provide a solid basis for discussions of this part of the economy, and of policy choices that affect it.