CANCELLED - Frictions to intranational investment

24  March 2022    3:00 pm CET

Julian Hinz, Bielefeld University

In cooperation with:
  

Venue

Due to illness of the presenter, this seminar had to be cancelled. As soon as a new date is fixed, we will announce it on our website

Description

The presentation is based on a joint work with Inga Heiland (Statistics Norway, University of Oslo).

Abstract:
Despite unhalted technological progress in transport and communication infrastructure over the past century, geographical and cultural distance remain major obstacles to the flow of goods and production factors to date. In this paper, we show that geographical and cultural distance forcefully shape intranational investment flows in Norway, preventing an efficient allocation of capital to firms. To that end, we derive a structural gravity equation of investment from a general equilibrium model with multiple locations, multiple assets, and information frictions. Based on the model, we identify frictions related to geographical distance, travel time, administrative borders, and language differences and quantify the loss in terms of portfolio efficiency caused by each individual friction and by gravity as a whole. Through the lense of the model, we also study the impact of a major infrastructure policy program from the 2000s: The government-funded roll-out of broadband internet access across the country.

The presentation, when available, will be posted online after the event.

Julian Hinz

Julian Hinz is an empirical economist working on topics in international trade, migration and applied econometrics. He is head of the Trade Policy Task Force and Assistant Professor for International Economics at Bielefeld University. Previously he was a visiting assistant professor at the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) of the University of Düsseldorf, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and Postdoc Fellow at the Kiel Centre for Globalization. In 2018–2019 he was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Paris School of Economics and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Julian Hinz studies international trade, in particular its political economy and connection with foreign policy, and the spatial dimension of international trade and migration, often in the context of the so-called gravity equation. His work is characterized by policy-relevant research questions that make use of state-of-the-art quantitative methods often involving big data, as well as devising and implementing econometric techniques to handle such types of data.

Related literature:

  • Okawa and Wincoop (2012)
  • Coeurdacier and Martin (2009)
  • Pellegrino, Spolaore, and Wacziarg (2021)
  • Hvide et al. (2020)

JEL classification: F36, G11

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