Research

1. The Compositional Effect of R&D Incentives: Evidence from Canadian firms, With Pavel Ševčík, Work in progress.
   Abstract: Does the design of R&D policy influence the direction of innovation? Using firm-level data from the Canadian Survey of Innovation and Business Strategy (2017-2019), we examine how different policy instruments shape the composition of research portfolios between applied and experimental activities. To address selection bias from unobservable firm characteristics, we employ a Heckman selection model with a solid exclusion restriction. We find that tax credits induce a significant shift toward higher-risk, experimental R&D, particularly among financially constrained firms. In contrast, hiring and training programs anchor research toward more conventional, applied development. Other instruments, such as direct subsidies, exhibit a more balanced effect on R&D composition. These findings demonstrate that R&D incentives are not fungible: the choice of policy instrument creates non-neutral distortions in the research process, with fundamental implications for long-run productivity growth.

1. Innovation and technology adoption under a Patent Box regime: Role of Human Capital and Market  Structure, With Pavel Ševčík, Work in progress.
   Abstract: This paper develops and estimates an endogenous growth model to evaluate the welfare and fiscal implications of Patent Box (PB) regimes. Firms are heterogeneous in human capital and invest in experimental R&D — generating radical innovations — and applied R&D — producing incremental productivity gains. Technologies depreciate and are continuously traded through patent licensing, akin to vintage capital. We solve the model numerically via an Upwind Finite Difference Scheme with an endogenously updated transition matrix, ensuring stable convergence under firm heterogeneity and state-dependent policy choices. We uncover a fundamental exploration-exploitation trade-off: the PB fosters frontier innovation by raising after-tax returns to patent sales and stimulating experimental R&D investment, while simultaneously reducing applied R&D investment, thereby hindering productivity gains from the improvement of existing technologies. Estimating the model on Canadian firm-level data (SIBS 2017–2019), we find that the patent box generates a net welfare gain equivalent to a permanent 2.3% increase in consumption, with each unit of fiscal cost yielding nearly two units of aggregate welfare gain.

2. Social Welfare Growth Accounting: The Power of Population Growth, Work in progress.
   Abstract: We analyze the increase in social welfare - measured in consumption equivalent (CE) units - by separating the contributions of population growth, technology growth and per capita consumption growth in the 10 Canadian provinces. Our social welfare growth accounting reveals that population growth is adjusted by a value-of-life factor, v, that empirically averages around 6.46 across provinces and over time.  On average, across provinces, CE welfare growth amounts to 9.67%, with population and technology growth contributing respectively 4.91% and 3.04% while consumption growth contributes 1.72%. We conduct several robustness analysis including considering within-province heterogeneity and consumption inequality. Because the population growth is scaled up by a value-of-life factor, one percent increase in population growth generate v percent increase in CE welfare growth. This basically makes population growth the predominant factor to CE welfare growth. Finally, we examined the elements that impact the value-of-life factor and we found that it increases with personal income and inflows migration while decreasing with mortality and outflows migration. 

3. Experimental and applied R&D investment under liquidity constraints,  JMP.
   Abstract: How should governments design R&D policies when firms differ in financial capacity and research orientation? Motivated by firm-level evidence from the 2017 and 2019 waves of the Survey of Innovation and Business Strategy (SIBS), we built a general equilibrium model of firm innovation to uncover the mechanisms driving the differential effects of tax credits and direct subsidies. Solved numerically via an Upwind Finite Difference Scheme with an endogenously updated transition matrix, the model reveals that tax credits induce stronger allocative distortions than subsidies, shifting financially constrained firms away from applied R&D and toward experimental R&D. Although subsidies support both research types more proportionally and generate larger social welfare gains (+23.50% versus +21.24%), tax credits prove more fiscally efficient at lower fiscal cost (0.37% versus 0.42% of GDP). The optimal policy depends on whether policymakers prioritize aggregate welfare or fiscal efficiency: a trade-off with direct implications for economies facing binding financial frictions and limited fiscal space, as is the case in most emerging markets.

Gendered Agglomeration and Innovation Dynamics, With Ahodode B. G. C., Working Paper

Efficacité des politiques de soutien aux entreprises pour la recherche et développement, With Martin, J., Mayneris, F., & Mohnen, P., Working paper.

National Innovation System and Knowledge Production in Canada, Working paper.