Marcel Henkel
Advanced Post-Doctoral Researcher
Department of Economics
University of Bern
Research Interests: Spatial Economics | Political Economy | Public Economics
Contact:
Schanzeneckstrasse 1
3001 Bern, Switzerland
[Curriculum Vitae] | [Google Scholar] | [LinkedIn]
The Unintended Consequences of Post-Disaster Policies for Spatial Sorting (with Eunjee Kwon and Pierre Magontier)
Status: Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Political Economy
[CRED Research Paper No. 37, 03/2023] | [VoxEU column]
Coverage: nadaesgratis, Freakonomics Radio.
Summary: Exploiting the random timing of hurricanes to analyze how electoral incentives distort disaster relief, causing distributional imbalance and locking populations in high-risk areas
Fiscal Transfers in the Spatial Economy (with Tobias Seidel and Jens Suedekum)
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Vol. 13, Issue 4, 433-68, November 2021.
[Online Supplement] | [Replication Package] | [VoxEU]
Coverage: Spiegel Online
A Spatial Perspective on European Integration: Heterogeneous Welfare and Migration Effects from the Single Market and the Brexit (with Tobias Seidel)
Economic Inquiry, Vol. 57, Issue 1, 333-352, January 2019.
Spatial Policies and Heterogeneous Employment Responses (with Fabian Bald) Status: Under Review
[Berlin School of Economics Discussion Paper No. 63, 03/2025]
Summary: Introducing a labor force participation margin into quantitative spatial models to analyze how "participation-enabling" policies (like childcare) in productive cities generate a double dividend of equity and efficiency.
Stream I: The Geography of AI This research program integrates quantitative spatial economics with the economics of AI to analyze how the physical constraints of compute infrastructure reshape spatial inequality
Compute Infrastructure and Spatial Inequality: Quantifying the "compute divide" by analyzing the location fundamentals of corporate datacenters and energy grids
Fiscal Federalism in the AGI Era: Designing optimal fiscal transfer systems for an economy where production is decoupled from labor location
Stream II: Institutional Path Dependence Investigating how historical political boundaries and institutional rules lock in long-run economic geography
Railway Towns and Path Dependence: Evidence from U.S. Land Grant Boundaries (with Eric Strobl) Investigating how 19th-century institutional incentives for land value capture (the "checkerboard" land grants) generated persistent spatial inefficiencies in the U.S. urban network
Endogenous Government Formation and Spatial Sorting (with Pierre Magontier) Modeling the "Tiebout-Homevoter Cycle" to explain how municipal incorporation thresholds drive urban fragmentation and segregation
The Political Economy of Redistribution (1820-2010) (with Pierre Magontier) Analyzing how rural malapportionment has shaped 200 years of U.S. urbanization and infrastructure investment
Spatial Moral Hazard in Banking
Summary: A network GIV approach to identifying systemic risk transmission across branch networks
The Role of Local Public Goods for Fiscal Policy in the Spatial Economy (with Fabian Bald)
[CRED Research Paper No. 33, 09/2021]
Note: This paper precedes the current working paper "Spatial Policies and Heterogeneous Employment Responses".
The Role of Key Regions in Spatial Development (with Raphael N. Becker)
Regional and Urban Economics (MSc, parts): Lecture on spatial equilibrium models and policy applications.
Student Evaluations (Fall 2024): 5.55 / 6.0 [Link to Course]
Topics in Public Economics (BSc/MSc)
Regional Economics & Fiscal Federalism (MSc)
International Trade (BSc./MSc.) | Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, 2019-2020.
Sole instructor with full responsibility for lectures and exams.
Econometrics & Empirical Methods (BSc./MSc.) | University of Duisburg-Essen.
Focus on Causal Inference and Applied Econometrics.
Core Theory: Macroeconomics (BSc.), Microeconomics (BSc), Monetary Economics (MSc) - University of Duisburg-Essen
Thesis Supervision: Advised 25+ Bachelor's and Master's theses at the University of Bern and University of Duisburg-Essen.
Topics: Spatial economics, regional policy, public economics, macroeconomics, labor economics, international trade, monetary economics, and applied econometrics.