Rent Sharing under Innovation Tax Breaks (with Sabien Dobbelaere)
We study whether firms share gains from innovation tax incentives with incumbent workers and whether such rent sharing is associated with increased worker retention. The Dutch innovation box reduces tax rates on profits from in-house innovation. Linking first-time beneficiaries to matched employer-employee data, we combine nearest-neighbour matching with staggered difference-in-differences. Part of the additional after-tax surplus is passed on to incumbent workers: wages rise by 3.27% on average, with increases of 2.05% for workers least involved in R&D and 4.14% for tertiary-educated STEM workers. Descriptively, treated non-R&D incumbents are 3.47 percentage points less likely to switch employers following treatment.
Measuring Advertising Spillovers in the Automobile Industry (with Jose-Luis Moraga Gonzalez and Sandor Zsolt)
This paper examines the existence of advertising spillovers in the automobile industry. For this purpose, we formulate an empirical consideration set model of demand where advertising serves to increase buyer awareness. Each car model has an independent probability of being considered for purchase and this probability is influenced by a brand's own advertising, as well as the advertising of substitute models within the same brand, other brands within the same business group, and competing brands. We estimate the model using data from the Netherlands on regional car sales, prices, car advertising expenditures and car characteristics for the year 2008. We find evidence that own advertising increases the consideration probability of a car and that advertising spillovers are positive and sizable. These spillovers have important implications for firm strategy and market outcomes.
Work in progress
Hiring and Workforce Composition at Innovative Firms (with Sabien Dobbelaere)
Workforce Composition and the Pass-Through from Innovation to Competitiveness (with Daniele Aglio and Sabien Dobbelaere)