Current Research
Since June 2022, I have been conducting research on innovation and resilience. In particular, I examine how innovation affects corporate resilience, and I use financial statements and stock prices of publicly traded companies in developed economies to operationalize innovation and resilience, as well as determine whether and the extent to which the former affects the latter. The title of my dissertation is ‘Essays on Innovation as a Resilience Strategy’, and it is composed of three papers, as elaborated below.
The extended abstract of the first paper constituting my dissertation, titled ‘Corporate Innovation and Resilience in the United States’, was accepted for the Academy of Management Journal Paper Development Workshop, held on 12—13 October 2022 at LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome. The full paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, which took place in Boston, MA, United States, on 4—8 August 2023, as well as the Annual Conference of the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics, which took place on 24—26 August 2023 at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. Details of the revised paper are available below.
During my visiting research stay at the Leibniz Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim (February—June 2024), I researched the tax credit for research and development (Forschungszulage) in Germany, finding that it has been effective in inducing additional investment despite the heightened uncertainty firms faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. I presented the outcome of that research at a ZEW research seminar on 24 June 2024, as well as at the Franco-German Fiscal Policy Seminar organized by the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin (9—10 December 2024).
The second and third papers constituting my dissertation examine corporate innovation and resilience in the euro area and the United Kingdom, respectively. The abstracts of both papers are below.
Corporate Innovation and Resilience in the United States
Abstract
This paper provides evidence on whether innovation enhanced the resilience of publicly traded companies in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the financial statements and stock prices of over 900 companies observed weekly before and during the pandemic, we show that while companies reporting research and development (R&D) expenses and those not reporting such expenses followed a similar trajectory before the pandemic, their paths diverged in its aftermath. We propose two new measures of resilience—impact resistance and recovery speed—to explicate the mechanisms by which innovation enhances resilience. We find that other things being equal, companies reporting R&D expenses were less likely to incur a loss during the pandemic and recovered faster if having incurred a loss. Thus, innovation is a resilience strategy that enables effective crisis response and recovery.
Keywords: crisis; innovation; resilience; strategy
JEL codes: E32; M21; O32
Presentations: Academy of Management Annual Meeting (4—8 August 2023); SIOE Annual Conference (24—26 August 2023)
Corporate Innovation and Resilience in the Euro Area
Abstract
This paper provides evidence on whether innovation enhanced the resilience of publicly traded companies in the euro area during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using financial statements and stock prices of around 1,200 companies observed from the first week of 2019 to the last week of 2021, I find that companies reporting research and development expenses before the crisis induced by the pandemic were less likely to incur a loss due to its impact as well as recovered faster if having incurred a loss. In addition, I examine whether institutions and government policies played a role in fostering resilience. I find that the impact of innovation on resilience is greater in countries that reduced corporate tax rates during the pandemic and extended existing tax incentives to mitigate its impact.
Keywords: crisis; innovation; institutions; resilience; taxation
JEL codes: D02; E32; H25; M21; O31
Presentations: Berkeley—Padova—Paris Organizational Economics Workshop (29—30 May 2025); Deutsche Bundesbank (10—15 August 2025)
Submissions: Oxford Centre for Business Taxation Doctoral Conference (8—9 September 2025); CEPR Paris Symposium: European Financial Architecture (5—10 December 2025); CEPR Women in Macroeconomics and Finance Conference (20—21 October 2025)
Corporate Innovation and Resilience in the United Kingdom
Abstract
This paper examines corporate innovation and resilience by taking a multi-level multi-actor perspective. I synthesize extant theoretical perspectives on organizational resilience and regional resilience, advancing the hypothesis that private expenditure on research and development has a stronger impact on corporate resilience in regions that receive greater government funding for research and innovation. I test this hypothesis using financial statements and stock price data of around 300 companies traded on the London Stock Exchange before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with statistics on publicly funded research across 12 regions in the United Kingdom. My findings support the hypothesis that private expenditure on research and development has a stronger impact on resilience in regions that received greater funding for innovation before the pandemic. Therefore, there are interactions between regional innovation investment and organizational resilience that should be taken into account in both current academic research and public policymaking.
Keywords: innovation; organization; policy; region; resilience
JEL codes: E32; M21; O31; R58
Presentation: Manchester Institute of Innovation Research Seminar (24 March 2025)
Submissions: CEPR Paris Symposium: Organizational Economics (5—10 December 2025); American Economic Association Annual Meeting (3—5 January 2026)