Sebastian Gomez-Cardona

Sebastian Gomez-Cardona

PhD candidate in Economics

University of British Columbia

Biography

I am a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the Vancouver School of Economics of The University of British Columbia. My research interests are in household finance, macroeconomics and international finance. I will be available for interviews in the 2023-2024 job market.

Interests

  • Household Finance
  • Macroeconomics
  • International Finance

Education

  • PhD in Economics, 2024 (Expected)

    University of British Columbia

  • MSc in Economics, 2011

    The London School of Economics and Political Science

  • MSc in Economics, 2010

    Universidad EAFIT

  • BSc in Mathematical Engineering, 2009

    Universidad EAFIT

Working Papers

Publications before PhD

Capabilities and investment in R&D: An analysis on European data

In this paper we test the effect of technological capabilities (accumulated knowledge and organization/production routines) on the R&D intensity for a panel of European industries. Our proxy for capabilities is the distance from the technological frontier. Estimation is carried out with System Generalized Methods of Moments and is robust to various specifications. Our identification strategy is limited to the average (reduced form) effect. We find a strong effect of capabilities on the amount invested in R&D, after controlling for demand pull, technology push, size, and cash constraints. The latter ones are the main variables used in the literature on the determinants of innovative expenditure, of which R&D is one of the components. The elasticity of the distance from the technological frontier is 10%, of similar magnitude (but opposite sign) with regard to the effect of internal resources. When we allow for heterogeneous impact, clustering the industries according to their technological level, we see that the effect of capabilities is robust, but concentrated in Medium and Low Tech sectors. Moreover, the effect is stronger in the upswings of the business cycle and is concentrated in peripheral countries. These latter stylized facts may suggest that the divergence induced by lack of capabilities is somehow nonlinear and increases when a critical mass is missing.

Teaching

TA - University of British Columbia

ECON 603: Macroeconomics II (PhD)

In-person: Spring 2020, Spring 2022, Spring 2023. Online: Spring 2021

ECON 602: Macroeconomics I (PhD)

Online: Fall 2020

ECON 502: Macroeconomics (Masters)

In-person: Fall 2021, Fall 2022

ECON 500: Microeconomics (Masters)

In-person: Fall 2019

ECON 345: Money and Banking (Undergrad)

Online: Summer 2021

Lecturer (Part-Time) - Universidad EAFIT

Econometrics II (Masters)

In-person: 2013 - 2017

Mathematical Economics (Undergrad)

In-person: 2012 - 2016

Multivariate Calculus (Undergrad)

In-person: 2009 - 2010

Contact