Research
Research interests
My main research interests lie in international trade, economic geography and urban and regional economics. I am also interested in certain areas of labor economics and development economics. In my studies, I focus on the role of the spatial dimension of economic activity in the shaping of international trade and in the evolution of inequalities across and within regions. One major part of my research is devoted to the empirical validation of different predictions of the New Economic Geography theory on spatial income heterogeneity and factor movements.
My Ph.D. dissertation explores the effect of economic geography on income inequality within a country and on internal migration. My work contributes to the analysis of growing income inequality in China by evaluating to what extent market proximity can explain spatial income disparities. I also investigate the influence of market proximity on the location choice of migrants in Brazil.
Current research
In my current research, I am working on Japanese multinational firms, studying the impact of investing abroad on the performance of the parent. I am also interested in the the location choice of FDI and the importance of product adaptation for international trade and for FDI.