Davide joins Bristol as a Lecturer in Economics having previously been in a postdoctoral position at Northwestern University in Illinois, USA. He will be teaching Economics of Innovation and Labour Economics this year, and we caught up with him to learn more about his interests in these and other areas of economics.
Firstly, we spoke about what led him to Bristol and what he’s most looking forward to about being here…
What is your background in economics?
Growing up during the Great Recession, I realised that economics offered a privileged perspective on interpreting and possibly understanding human societies' complexity. Economic history was a natural academic choice because it allowed me to combine a passion for history and politics with the tools and perspective of an economist.
I spent my initial university years as in Pisa, where I studied economics at the University of Pisa and at Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, whose small and attentive research community pushed me to pursue a research career.
Later, in 2023, I obtained my PhD in economics at Bocconi University in Milan. The challenging and stimulating environment at Bocconi provided essential training for modern academic research in economics and further nurtured my interests.
After that, I joined the economics department at Northwestern University as a postdoctoral researcher. I am heavily indebted to the vibrant community there, which offered me an incredibly diverse and refreshing perspective on state-of-the-art economics research.
What attracted you to join University of Bristol this year?
The University of Bristol is a fantastic place to kickstart my professional career. The faculty includes scholars who have been doing fascinating work on the economics of innovation, migration, and economic history. I hope to be able to contribute to this stimulating intellectual community and receive guidance from more experienced researchers.
Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, the University of Bristol is located in Bristol, and I am very much looking forward to discovering its lively music and art scenes!
Can you tell us more about your research?
As an early-stage researcher, I am proud to have constructed a long-term, organic, and multidisciplinary research agenda that reflects my personal curiosity and interests. The core of my research explores how technological change, perhaps the most fundamental driver of long-run economic prosperity, diffuses across and within countries.
Currently, I am studying the role of migration networks in facilitating the outflow of knowledge in the countries of origin of migrants, where relative technological limitation frequently hinders growth.
Building on a vast literature intersecting economic history, sociology, and psychology – another strand of my research explores how cultural traits, such as religiosity and discriminatory behaviours, influence the rate and direction of technological change.
I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to study what interests me the most and possibly to advance our knowledge on these topics.
What impact do you hope your research can have?
As an applied economist, my research blends insights from multiple disciplines, from history to sociology, and harnesses unique, extremely large datasets to answer policy-relevant questions that would be challenging to answer using only contemporary data and settings.
The primary insight that my research delivers and that I hope will receive attention is that when rich, Western countries "close the border" to immigrants from poorer regions, these policies have profound, deleterious effects on those countries, ranging from over-population to delayed technology diffusion and, hence, growth.
Over the last decades, the number of international migrants has steadily and continuously increased. Recently, restrictive immigration policies have emerged as a central item in the agendas of right- and left-wing political parties alike. My research seeks to inform policymakers about the harm these agendas can cause to emigration countries.
What advice would you give to economics students?
The domain of economics has expanded tremendously over the last few years. Contemporary economists study the behaviour of inflation and consumption during recessions as much as they explore the legal institutions pre-dating the Industrial Revolution, the causes and consequences of discrimination, and the drivers of scientific advancement.
My most sincere advice to current or prospective students is to follow their curiosity in exploring this vast realm of knowledge. Economics offers an invaluable methodological arsenal to approach quantitative research in social science and a useful mindset to think about the complexity of human organisations.