Working Papers

• Green Technological Change After Natural Disasters: Evidence from Hurricane Katrina

  Job Market Paper;
  Media Coverage: CEPR VoxEU Talk
  Abstract: Climate change leads to more destructive natural disasters, particularly hurricanes, which can significantly disrupt knowledge production. This paper studies the effects of Hurricane Katrina — one of the costliest and deadliest storms in U.S. history — on inventors' innovation outcomes, including green innovation which helps combat climate change. Using hazard and patent data for U.S. inventors in a difference-in-differences design, I find that Katrina reduced inventors' production of green patents, while non-green patents were unaffected. Specifically, affected inventors could have produced an additional 0.220 green patents following the storm, i.e., a potential 415 percent increase, had Katrina not occurred. The negative effects are driven by the greater distance in technological expertise (knowledge diversity) among collaborators in green innovation teams, making it harder to substitute for affected inventors and continue their technological tasks. These findings suggest that climate change can disrupt human efforts aimed at addressing its impact, particularly through natural disasters and that knowledge diversity can compromise the resilience of technological development when faced with disruptions.

• Exporting Modes as Learning Strategies of African Firms: The Moderating Effect of Absorptive Capacity

  with Saul Estrin and Lilac Nachum;
  Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Management Studies
  Abstract: We examine the impact of different export strategies on learning and innovation of African firms. We distinguish between direct exporting, indirect exporting and a combined strategy in which firms pursue both strategies simultaneously. Building on learning theories and applying them to the African context we present these exporting strategies as alternative venues for learning and theorize the mechanisms by which they affect innovation. We test the theory based on all African exporters included in World Bank Enterprise Surveys. We find that direct exporters or those that pursue a combined strategy innovate more than indirect exporters. Firms’ absorptive capacity, shaped by the characteristics of their learning environment and those of their own, moderates the relationships between firms’ exporting strategies and their innovation performance. The development and testing of the theory in Africa enable us to observe the impact of context on learning via exporting in a lesser studied region and deepen the understanding of the mechanisms that determine this outcome.