Current Research
Since June 2022, I have been conducting research on innovation and resilience. In particular, I examine how innovation affects resilience at the organizational level, and I use financial statements and stock prices of publicly traded companies in developed economies to operationalize innovation and resilience, as well as determine whether and the extent to which the former affects the latter. The title of my dissertation is ‘Innovation as a Resilience Strategy: Evidence from Europe, Japan, and the United States’.
The extended abstract of the first paper constituting my dissertation, titled ‘Corporate Innovation and Resilience: Evidence from Publicly Traded Companies in the United States’, was accepted for the Academy of Management Journal Paper Development Workshop, held on 12—13 October 2022 at LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome. The full paper was accepted for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, which took place in Boston, MA, United States, on 4—8 August 2023, as well as the Annual Conference of the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics, which took place on 24—26 August 2023 at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. Details are available below.
During my visiting research stay at the Leibniz Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim (February—June 2024), I researched the tax credit for research and development (Forschungszulage) in Germany, finding that it has been effective in inducing additional investment despite the heightened uncertainty firms faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. I presented the outcome of that research at a ZEW research seminar on 24 June 2024, as well as at the Franco-German Fiscal Policy Seminar organized by the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin (9—10 December 2024).
The second and third papers constituting my dissertation examine corporate innovation and resilience in the euro area and the United Kingdom, respectively. The abstract of the second paper is below, while the abstract of the third paper will be available upon the conclusion of my research stay at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (early April 2025).
Corporate Innovation and Resilience in the United States
Abstract
This paper empirically examines the relationship between innovation and resilience. Based on prior conceptual-theoretical and empirical literature in the field, it is hypothesized that organizations allocating greater resources to innovation prior to an exogenous crisis, as well as those allocating greater resources to innovation during a crisis, are more resilient than their counterparts not undertaking such allocation. In addition, it is hypothesized that organizations that have been adversely affected by an exogenous crisis but allocate greater resources to innovation following its adverse impact are more resilient than their counterparts not undertaking such allocation. To test these hypotheses, the paper develops two new measures of resilience and applies those to a panel dataset of around 300 publicly traded companies in the United States. It is found that holding other factors, such as industry, liquidity, and age, constant, organizations allocating greater resources to innovation are more resilient to exogenous crises. The impact of the allocation of resources to innovation pre-crisis on organizational resilience is greater than the impact of the allocation of resources to innovation during a crisis. Based on these findings, the paper offers a novel conceptualization of innovation as a resilience strategy, with respective implications for management theory and practice.
Keywords: crisis; innovation; resilience; strategy
JEL codes: E32; M21; O32
Presentations: Academy of Management Annual Meeting (4—8 August 2023); SIOE Annual Conference (24—26 August 2023)
Corporate Innovation and Resilience in the Euro Area
Abstract
This paper provides evidence on whether innovation enhanced the resilience of publicly traded companies in the euro area during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using financial statements and stock prices of around 1,200 companies observed from the first week of 2019 to the last week of 2021, I find that companies reporting research and development expenses before the crisis induced by the pandemic were less likely to incur a loss due to its impact as well as recovered faster if having incurred a loss. In addition, I examine whether institutions and government policies played a role in fostering resilience. I find that the impact of innovation on resilience is greater in countries that reduced corporate tax rates during the pandemic and extended existing tax incentives to mitigate its impact.
Keywords: crisis; innovation; institutions; resilience; taxation
JEL codes: D02; E32; H25; M21; O31
Submissions: Barcelona School of Economics Summer Forum (18—19 June 2025); Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation Academic Symposium (30 June—2 July 2025); NBER Summer Institute (Economic Fluctuations and Growth Program Meeting, 12 July 2025, and SI Innovation, 15—16 July); European Economic Association Annual Meeting (25—28 August 2025); CEPR Women in Macroeconomics and Finance Conference (20—21 October 2025)