Primary Research Focuses: Macroeconomics, Economic Growth

Secondary Research Focuses: Innovation, Firm Dynamics

References: 

• Ufuk Akcigit (Committee Chair)
• Veronica Guerrieri
• Mikhail Golosov

Job Market Paper: "Spatial Allocation of Inventors, Knowledge Diffusion and Growth"

[Abstract] Where does innovation truly thrive? Inventive activity in the US is strikingly concentrated in a handful of hubs. This raises compelling questions: Does further agglomeration drive innovation, or could a more dispersed approach better leverage regional spillovers? To investigate, I exploit variation in patent citation lags across US states and develop a novel endogenous growth model with mobile inventors and workers. The model integrates an exogenous knowledge network that facilitates the dynamic exchange of ideas—laying the foundation for future inventions—between locations, revealing that inventors do not internalize how their location choice influences broader knowledge diffusion. These knowledge spillovers call for a targeted, place-based R&D subsidy to unlock latent innovation potential. Calibrating the model to data on inventor and worker allocations—and estimating the knowledge diffusion network from patent citations—I find that optimal policy would further concentrate inventors in established hubs, enhancing welfare by 1.8 percent in consumption-equivalent terms and boosting the economy’s long-run growth rate by 0.14 percentage points.