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Tommaso Bighelli

Tommaso Bighelli
Current Position

since 10/19

Economist in the Department of Structural Change and Productivity

Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) – Member of the Leibniz Association

Research Interests
  • firm productivity
  • international economics

Tommaso Bighelli joined the Department of Structural Change and Productivity as a doctoral student in October 2019. He is also a member of the CompNet research team. His research focuses on productivity, firms' heterogeneity, and international economics.

Tommaso Bighelli received his bachelor's and master's degree from Sapienza University in Rome as well as a master of research in economic analysis from the IDEA Graduate Programme at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Your contact

Tommaso Bighelli
Tommaso Bighelli
Mitglied - Department Structural Change and Productivity
Send Message +49 345 7753-878

Publications

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European Firm Concentration and Aggregate Productivity

Tommaso Bighelli Filippo di Mauro Marc Melitz Matthias Mertens

in: Journal of the European Economic Association, forthcoming

Abstract

This paper derives a European Herfindahl–Hirschman concentration index from 15 micro-aggregated country datasets. In the last decade, European concentration rose due to a reallocation of economic activity toward large and concentrated industries. Over the same period, productivity gains from an increasing allocative efficiency of the European market accounted for 50% of European productivity growth while markups stayed constant. Using country-industry variation, we show that changes in concentration are positively associated with changes in productivity and allocative efficiency. This holds across most sectors and countries and supports the notion that rising concentration in Europe reflects a more efficient market environment rather than weak competition and rising market power.

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