Research
· Economic growth, growth in the models of North-South trade with endogenous R&D
· Heterogeneous firms and labor market outcomes
· International trade and development, trade specialization patterns
- Intellectual Property Rights
Publications
“World Trade Patterns and Prices: The Role of Productivity and Quality Heterogeneity” (with Cristiana Benedetti Fasil), Journal of International Economics, 91(1), September 2013, 68–81.
“Innovation and Imitation in a Model of North-South Trade”, Journal of International Economics, 87(2), July 2012, 365–376.
“Regional Integration and Economic Growth: The Case of The European Union” (with Ali M. Kutan), The Journal of International Trade and Diplomacy (2008), 2(1), 93-113.
Working papers
“Innovation Union: Costs and Benefits of Innovation Policy Coordination”, 2023 (with Giammario Impullitti, Adam Spencer and Fabrice Defever)
R&R Journal of the European Economic Association
What are the growth and welfare effects of an innovation subsidy war? We address this question in a two-region endogenous growth model with exogenous and endogenous international knowledge spillovers. We use the model to analyse subsidy competition and cooperation in the EU, which has a common trade and monetary policy but where a coordinated innovation is still in its infancy. To highlight the role of countries’ asymmetries, the model is calibrated to two blocks of the EU: the old Western European members and new members from Eastern Europe. We compare a scenario where regions set their R&D subsidies competitively with one in which they are set cooperatively. Cooperation is motivated by the distortions from subsidy competition, the strategic motive supporting a zero-sum game, and by intertemporal knowledge spillovers, which drive growth. We find substantial gains to coordination at the union level, deriving exclusively from correcting the strategic motive. Policy cooperation impacts regions differently, benefiting the new members and penalising the old members. When international idea flows are endogenised via FDI, knowledge spillovers and therefore growth, become the main drivers of coordination gains, which are also more equally distributed across regions. Our findings also suggest that conclusions based on steady state analysis have misleading optimal subsidies and overstate the estimated gains from policy cooperation.
“Trade Competition, Technology and Labor Re-allocation”, 2018 (with Rita Ginja and Selva Baziki) updated version!
This paper provides new evidence on the reallocation of workers across firms and industries with different technologies in response to increased import competition from developing countries. Using employer-employee matched data for the Swedish manufacturing sector, we find increased assortative matching of workers in information and communication technologies (ICT) intensive industries, that is, high(low)-wage workers sort into high(low)-wage firms. However, the high and low end sorting happen in industries with different trade exposure: in ICT intensive industries exposed to high import competition from China there is an increase in the share of high-wage workers in high-wage firms, while in industries facing low Chinese import competition there is an increase in the share of low-wage workers in low-wage firms. Industries with low ICT intensity do not exhibit any of these sorting patterns even with varying trade exposure.
"Markups from Inventory Data and Export Intensity", 2018 (with Mikael Carlsson)
This paper studies the relationship between export intensity and the price-cost markup using detailed Swedish .rm-level inventory data on the quarterly frequency. We proceed in the spirit of the production function approach to measure markup variation, but impose a minimal set of assumptions on the firm's environment. With access to a unique firm-level measure of capacity utilization, the data then allows us to cross check the identifying assumptions. Besides providing supporting evidence in favor of previous .ndings in the literature from a new data source, the quarterly data allows us to provide novel results on the rapid dynamic adjustment of the markup related to changes in export intensity.
“Welfare Effects of IPR Policy in a North-South Trade Model”, 2013
This paper analyzes the welfare effects of international Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection in a North-South trade model with endogenous R&D in the two regions, innovating North and imitating South. Goods are differentiated over quality and the resulting trade specialization over different quality supports the empirical findings on the current world trade patterns. Two questions are addressed, the welfare and growth implications of perfectly enforceable patents of finite length compared to a world with no IPR protection, and the effects of alternative IPR policy measures when patents are poorly enforced. The welfare optimizing patent lenght, from the perspective of the North, is positive and larger than the natural distance of the South, but it necessarily reduces the welfare of the South and growth in both regions. Compared to the social optimum, welfare and growth in both regions are lower, as the optimal North-South specialization pattern over quality is distorted. When patents are not enforced in a sense that they prevent copying, but allow the North to impose barrier on imports of copies, the results show negative effects of increased protectionism. Substituting other policy measures for the lack of patent protection (information protection or increase in the patent lenght) does not result in a welfare or growth increase that would restore the levels of a world with either no IPR protection or perfectly enforced patents.
Ongoing Research
“Exports, Imports, and Patents: Usual Suspects or Innocent Bystanders?” (with Ali Sina Önder and Sascha Schweitzer)
"Migration, Foreign Outsourcing and Firms Innovation: Which Links? An analysis for Sweden Using Labor Tasks" (with Giuseppe De Arcangelis,
Edoardo Di Porto)