Publications

This paper investigates whether the spatial concentration of economic activity in Europe has long-standing historical roots by leveraging a unique quasi-natural experiment: the removal of physical border barriers in cities that were historically unified, subsequently divided, and eventually reconnected. Schengen expansion led to a significant re-concentration of economic activity around pre-division city centers, reflected in increases in firm establishments and nighttime lights. This effect is driven by the restoration of cross-border commuter access, with effects declining sharply with distance from the historical center.

A growing body of research uses field and survey experiments to examine ethnic discrimination. Central to these studies is the use of people’s names as a proxy for ethnic origin. However, names signal more than solely ethnic markers. Moreover, their signals might vary across national contexts. Scholars should pre-test the perception of names used in experiments in order to properly interpret their results and reveal the mechanisms underlying discrimination. There is, however, no comprehensive study yet in Europe which thoroughly pre-test the perception of names across countries with profoundly different migration histories.

We study Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a natural experiment to determine how sudden disruptions to international market access reshape sub-national economic inequalities. Using remotely-sensed nighttime lights as a proxy for economic activity, we estimate the economic effects of the war at the national and regional levels. We find that Russia experienced an overall economic slowdown after the start of the full-scale invasion. Regions in Western and North-Western Russia experienced significantly larger economic contractions, while Southern and Southeastern regions exhibit relative improvements in performance.

This paper examines the uneven regional impacts of European integration across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Using a disaggregated synthetic control approach, I estimate localized treatment effects of market integration following the 2004 EU enlargement and mobility integration following the 2008 Schengen expansion. The results show that integration benefited interior regions more than border regions. Following EU enlargement, border regions lagged behind interior regions by approximately 2.5%. Schengen improved outcomes in border areas, but the larger gains remained in interior regions.