Research

My research agenda includes:

Innovation,
Growth and Development,
Productivity,
Public Policy,
Welfare Analysis,
Gender,
R&D and Innovation Policies.

Works in progress

2024

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.
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.
Experimental and applied R&D investment under liquidity constraints, JMP.
Abstract: How should governments design R&D support policies when firms differ in financial capacity and research orientation? Motivated by reduced-form evidence from Canadian firm-level data (SIBS, 2017-2019), we build a structural 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, systematically shifting financially constrained firms away from applied R&D and toward experimental R&D. Although subsidies support both research types more symmetrically and generate larger absolute 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 thus hinges on whether policymakers prioritize aggregate welfare or fiscal efficiency. This trade-off implies direct implications for economies facing binding financial frictions and limited fiscal space, precisely the conditions that characterize most emerging markets.