go to main contents
Search
Directory
Shortcuts
Search
URV

Sebastiano Cattaruzzo

PhD Programme: Economics and Business 
Research group: GRIT – Grup de Recerca en Indústria i Territori 
Supervisors: Agustí Segarra Blasco & Mercedes Teruel Carrizosa

Bio

Sebastiano Cattaruzzo holds a double degree of BSc in Economics from Ca' Foscari University in Venice and Georgia State University in Atlanta. In Atlanta, he had the chance to do his first research internship at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Then, he graduated with a MSc in Economics jointly offered by University of Pisa and Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. The master's dissertation, supervised by Dr Alessio Moneta, applied some novel tools for causal inference to study fundamental relationships in economics of innovation. During the master's experience, together with a colleague, he gave birth to “Critical European Thinking”, a seminar series aimed at offering alternative perspectives on precise aspects of the EU. Inviting academics from different fields, at each seminar, the audience listened to a dual perspective: economics and political science. Before starting the PhD, he worked for the Strategic Planning department at Ca' Foscari University.

Project: Exploring European Firms' Heterogeneity: Perspectives on Finance, Export, and R&D

The thesis explores three relevant firms' dimensions, finance, export and R&D, under the lens of heterogeneity. Both the choices of datasets and methodologies are explicitly in this direction and they constitute modern approaches to study firm growth and its dimensions. Applying quantile regression to a firm-level growth model, the impact of leverage on growth is analyzed. Across the growth distribution, only poor performing firms benefit from it, while for typical high-growth firms, probably other financial tools work better. Then, exporting is analyzed in relation to financial variables and high-growth firms. What appears is that firms, also high-growth one, tend to self-select into exporting markets according to their financial health, and they do not undergo significant capital structure changes thanks to exporting. Also, their persistence as high-growth firm depends on past persistence, as well as other more standard determinants like innovation. Finally, a decomposition of Spanish internal R&D is carried out using firm-level data. Dividing the data according to four factors (gazzelles, financial constraints, R&D subsidies and firms' characteristics) and according to two business periods (a contractionary and an expansionary one), interesting findings emerge. For instance, the R&D subsidy schemes and the presence of gazzelles appear as fundamental contributor to innovative input. Also, the strength of the business cycle dominates most of the distributional changes, implying that governmental support scheme are of fundamental importance during economic downturns.

Open Access publications

International secondment

  • University of Sussex, UK. 3 months (2019).

Outreach activities

  • European Researchers' Night 2020: "Descobrint el bé comú".

News