Hi, welcome to my website!

I am an economist and policy advisor at the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. I obtained my PhD in Economics in 2023 from Sciences Po under the supervision of Thomas Chaney. My main interests are in trade, spatial economics, development and innovation.

Here are my CV and my Google Scholar profile.

All views expressed here are my own and not those of my employer.

Research

Trade and Innovation

• The Diffusion of Knowledge: Evidence from the Jet Age, with Fernando Stipanicic
  Best paper awards at RIEF 2021 and WEFI.
  Submitted.

  Abstract

  This paper provides new causal evidence of the impact of air travel time on the creation and diffusion of knowledge. We exploit the beginning of the Jet Age as a quasi-natural experiment. We digitize airlines’ historical flight schedules and construct a novel data set of the flight network in the United States. Between 1951 and 1966, travel time between locations more than 2,000 km apart decreased on average by 41%. The reduction in travel time explains 33% of the increase in knowledge diffusion as measured by patent citations. The increase in knowledge diffusion further caused an increase in the creation of new knowledge. The results provide evidence that jet airplanes led to innovation convergence across locations and contributed to the shift in innovation activity towards the South and the West of the United States.

• Time after Time: Communication Costs and Inventor Collaboration in the Multinational Firm, with Cagatay Bircan and Beata Javorcik
  Submitted.

  Abstract

  We show that knowledge creation, as measured by patents, is increasingly conducted in cross-border collaborative teams of inventors. We document the importance of cross- border communication costs by showing that a higher overlap in business hours is associated with increased cross-border collaboration. This effect is distinct from the effect of physical distance, which matters as well. It is stronger for technology classes where lab experiments are involved and thus more frequent interactions may be required. Episodes of telecommunications liberalization (and the resulting decline in the cost of international calls) lead to an increase in cross-border collaboration, particularly when the business hour overlap between the headquarters and a subsidiary is larger. This effect is stronger for experiment-based technology classes. Less successful inventors respond more than their most successful peers.

• Traders in Trouble on the Road to Mandalay
  Draft available upon request.

  Abstract

  This paper studies the effect of uncertainty in trade costs on exporting. A large share of Myanmar's exports leaves to neighbouring countries via roads crossing heavily contested territory. Combining data on armed conflict with trade transaction data, I show that armed conflict close to these roads has a significant impact on trade flows. Firm-level export transactions via an affected route drop by around 50%. In addition, prices for export goods in Yangon’s retail markets, itself far away from conflict areas, drop by around 5%. This pass-through to local prices suggests that, as exporting via a conflict-affected route becomes risky, traders have few export alternatives and sell domestically instead. In addition, I observe that exporters of non-perishable goods delay transactions, reducing the negative impact of conflict. Among exporters of perishable and thus riskier products, large and politically connected firms are the most resilient. Overall, this suggests that the risk of losing shipments induced by conflict reduces exports, skews the distribution of gains from trade towards specific firms and spills over to the domestic market.

• The Gender Gap in Patenting, with Cagatay Bircan and Beata Javorcik

Other Topics

• You Can’t Sit with Us: How Locals and Tourists Compete for Amenities in Paris, with Vladimir Avetian | [SSRN Working Paper]
  Conditionally accepted at the Journal of Urban Economics

  Abstract

  Tourism in cities creates social interactions among people from distant cultures within limited space. How does the influx of tourists affect locals’ satisfaction with amenities? Using data on restaurant reviews, we construct a panel of tourist presence in Paris. Based on two unanticipated drops in tourism – the November 2015 terrorist attack and the COVID-19 pandemic – we document that tourism reduces Parisians’ satisfaction with restaurants. We find that social frictions, like xenophobia towards tourists, drive our results. As tourist numbers declined, explicit complaints about tourists in reviews decreased, while other complaints remained unaffected. Locals are least satisfied with dining among tourists from countries with weak social ties to France. Tourists are not affected by the presence of other tourists.

Policy Work

• EBRD Transition Report 2019-2020, Chapter 3: Firm-level Governance, with Cagatay Bircan, Gian Piero Cigna and Pavle Djuric.

• Coping with Covid-19, with Ettore Recchi, Emanuele Ferragina, Emily Helmeid, Mirna Safi, Nicolas Sauger and Jen Schradie.

  • Lockdown for All, Hardship for Some. Insights from the First Wave of the CoCo Project [Click here]
  • In the eye of the hurricane. French society a month into the lockdown [Click here]
  • When life revolves around the home: Work and sociability during the lockdown [Click here]
  • Life after lockdown: Getting back on track or charting a new course? [Click here]

Research Outside of Economics

• The “Eye of the Hurricane” Paradox: An Unexpected and Unequal Rise of Well-Being During the Covid-19 Lockdown in France, with Ettore Recchi, Emanuele Ferragina, Emily Helmeid, Mirna Safi, Nicolas Sauger and Jen Schradie. [Journal Page]
  Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. Vol. 68, August 2020