Research
Working papers under review:
Identity, Media and Consumer Behavior (with Sandra Sequeira), Accepted at Review of Economic Studies
Abstract: This paper examines how national identity affects day-to-day economic behavior. We exploit the Brexit referendum as a shock to the salience of identity and measure its impact on consumer choices in the UK, between British and EU grocery products. Drawing from a unique panel dataset with 12 million shoppers, we find that the referendum is associated with an increase in consumption of UK products (6%) and a reduction in demand for EU products (13%). Changes in consumption are driven by identity being top of mind: consumption of UK products is up to 7% higher during intense media discussions on Brexit, particularly during discussions on the politics of regaining sovereignty relative to the economic or social issues associated with Brexit. These findings underscore the importance of national identity in shaping routine economic decisions, and the mediating role that political events and the media can play by keeping identity top of mind.
State Aid Control in the German Broadband Market (with Tommaso Duso and Jo Seldeslachts), Accepted at Jhe Journal of the European Economic Association
Abstract: We provide an evaluation of the impact of public subsidy schemes that aimed to support the development of basic broadband infrastructure in rural areas of Germany. Such subsidies are subject to state aid control by the European Commission (EC). While the EC increasingly recognises the role of economic analysis in controlling public aid to companies, there are to date no full retrospective studies performed on state aid control, especially assessing the so-called balancing test. In this study, we do not only analyse whether the aid was effective in solving a market failure -- low broadband coverage in rural areas -- but also study its impact on competitive outcomes, on both rival firms and consumers. We adopt a difference-in-differences framework after using a matching procedure to account for selection on observables. We find that the aid significantly increased broadband coverage. More importantly, we find that the number of internet providers has significantly increased in the municipalities receiving aid. This additional entry decreased average prices. Therefore, the subsidies complied with EU state aid rules, both in terms of effectiveness and competition.
The Impact of Piracy Notice Sending on Consumer Behavior for Entertainment: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment in the UK (with Rahul Telang, Micheal Smith and Tommaso Valletti)
Abstract: This paper studies how a major anti-piracy notice-sending program in the UK impacts the consumption of entertainment goods. We collaborated with the program organizers to run a randomized control trial as part of their notice-sending program where we randomly assign geographic regions (postcode districts) to either a treatment or a control condition, such that users living in treated areas received notices of piracy violations and users in control postcodes received no such notices. We study the effect of notices on several outcomes: copyright infringements, sales of physical products (CDs and DVDs), and subscriptions to a leading movie-streaming platform. The experiment shows a 3.6 to 4.8 percent decrease in piracy in treated postcodes relative to control postcodes. We also find that notices did not increase legal consumption of physical products but they resulted in a 9.7 percent increase in subscriptions to the movie-streaming platform in treated areas relative to control areas.
Broadband and Productivity: Structural Estimates for Germany (with Tomaso Duso and Alexander Schiersch). R&R at the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
Abstract: We study the impact of broadband availability on firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) using German firm-level data between 2010 and 2015. We adopt a control function approach to causally identify and separately estimate productivity for 46 two-digit manufacturing and service sectors. Over the sample period, broadband availability, measured by transmission rates of at least 16 Mbps, more than doubled in German municipalities. While this increased broadband availability has almost no effect on firms’ productivity in manufacturing, it significantly increases TFP in most service sectors, up to an average estimated effect of +6.8% in activities that follow under the Information and communication services.
Published Papers:
Information and vaccine hesitancy: the role of broadband Internet Health Economics (2024). Joint with Sofia Amaral Garcia, Carol Propper and Tommaso Valletti
Broadband Internet and Social Capital, Journal of Public Economics, Vol 206, 104578 (2022). Joint with Andrea Geraci, Fabio Sabatini and Tommaso G. Reggiani
Mums Go Online: Is the Internet Changing the Demand for Healthcare? Review of Economics and Statistics, 104(6), 1157-1173 (2022). Joint with Sofia Amaral Garcia, Carol Propper and Tommaso Valletti
Internet and Politics: Evidence from UK Local Elections and Local Government Policies, Review of Economic Studies, Vol 86, Pages: 2092-2135, (2019). Joint with Alessandro Gavazza and Tommaso Valletti
Effective Reminders , Management Science, Vol. 63: 2915-2932, (2017). Joint with Giacomo Calzolari
Unbundling the incumbent: Evidence from UK broadband , Journal of the European Economic Association, Vol. 13: 330–362, (2015). Joint with Tommaso Valletti and Frank Verboven
Cooperation or Competition? A Field Experiment on Non-Monetary Learning Incentives , The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. Volume 15, Issue 4, Pages 1753–1792 (2015). Joint with Maria Bigoni, Margherita Fort and Tommaso G. Reggiani
Work in progress:
A Political Disconnect? Evidence From Voting on EU Trade Agreements (with Paola Conconi, Florin Cucu, and Federico Gallina) Draft here
Transparency and competition for influence (with Sofia Amaral Garcia, Giacomo Calzonari and Vincenzo Denicolò)
Price norms and consumption behavior (with Pedro Bordalo and Sandra Sequeira)
Mimeos:
Stable naives and math sophisticated (first chapter PhD thesis)