Upcoming Presentations

Abstract: The economic and psychological literature on second-hand consumption has identified specific drivers and barriers on the part of consumers. One of such barriers is consumers’ lack of awareness about the environmental costs entailed by producing new goods. Generally, awareness is raised through labels reporting CO2 emissions. Yet, consumers state that they find it difficult to interpret such information, prompting one to consider alternative metrics. In this paper, we investigate how intention to engage in second-hand clothing consumption varies when the environmental production cost refers to CO2, electric energy, or water. Intention was measured both in a self-reported fashion as well as via a choice between vouchers for first- vs. second-hand clothes, which we administered to a large, nationally representative sample of the Italian population (N = 10, 496). We find that providing information in terms of water elicits the highest stated intention and change in willingness to pay/accept for second-hand clothing, followed by energy; both treatment effects are statistically significantly different from those of CO2. The change in willingness to pay/accept is stronger for consumers who underestimate environmental costs and those who already had past experience with second-hand clothes.

*This session is part of the Job Market Seminar Series.

Abstract: We identify communication shocks from the informal ECB speeches and the Board of Governors of the FED and show their effects across borders. Is central bank communication (CBC) able to reduce economic uncertainty? A wide body of literature has analysed the relationship between CBC and uncertainty at the local level. We focus on the transmission of CBC across borders.

*This session is part of the Job Market Seminar Series.

Abstract: Are pre-grant patent effective forward-looking “news” signals for global innovation diffusion? To address this question, I use a novel 1980–2019 panel of pre-grant patent filing counts and trade data for 21 economies (17 OECD + 4 BRICS) to construct an import–share–weighted index of filed patents. I instrument this index with a Bartik shift–share of partner-country filed patent counts to isolate exogenous trade-driven shocks, and build an analogous granted-patent index for comparison. Panel local projections show that trade-driven pre-grant shocks, while slower to materialize, generate larger long-run TFP gains than granted-patent shocks and produce stronger, more immediate equity-market reactions across countries. At the sector level, shocks to the filed-patent index boost manufacturing TFP and R&D capital within one year and sustain growth thereafter; heterogeneous analysis shows that countries with more R&D-intensive manufacturing sectors experience even larger TFP gains. At the industry level, I use the quality-adjusted cited patent index by LaBelle et al. (2023) and interact it with value-added intensity to investigate the role of pre-grant cited patents across industries under their value-added structure in signaling future innovation diffusion. The average responses of labour productivity across manufacturing industries reveal that textiles and chemicals, which are more citation-driven, exhibit gradual but persistent gains. By contrast, machinery shows stronger and more immediate effects as it is more trade-driven. These results at the industry level further demonstrate the power of pre-grant patents as better forward-looking measures into the timing, channels, and heterogeneity of global innovation diffusion compared to granted patents. 

*This session is part of the Job Market Seminar Series.

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of temporary sectoral shocks on human capital accumulation and introduces a structural model to quantify their long-term general equilibrium effects. I use Spain’s economic boom (1995-2007) as a case study, which represented a positive labor demand shock in construction and low-skill services, and show that it led to a persistent decline in educational attainment among young workers. To evaluate the general equilibrium implications of this shock during the transition, I construct a quantitative lifecycle model in which workers endogenously choose education and sectoral employment under imperfect human capital transferability. The model reproduces the observed decline in educational attainment and sluggish labor reallocation following the boom. The transition, which is driven primarily by new cohorts, entails a persistent decline in aggregate productivity, with cumulative losses of about 7% and convergence to the steady state over roughly 50 years. The findings demonstrate that positive sectoral shocks can generate adverse long-run aggregate outcomes and substantial distributional effects—cohorts born during the boom experience lifetime earnings gains of nearly 11%, while those born before or after incur losses—highlighting the scope for redistributive policy interventions.

*This session is part of the Job Market Seminar Series.