Five UB School of Economics PhD students awarded SEBAP movility grants

From a total of 13 mobility scholarships, 5 research mobility grant by the Barcelona Economic Society of Friends of the Country (SEBAP) have been awarded to UB School of economics. The recipients are Akin Ayberk Cilekoglu, Marie Beigelman, Liliana Cuccu, Marianna Magagnoli, Ghizlen Ouasbaa, and Claudia Serra. 

The grant provides 4.200 euros in funding for a visiting period at a foreign institution. In this case, the students have chosen the University of Munich, the University of Sheffield, the University of Liverpool, the Université Paris-Saclay, and the University of Uppsala. The award ceremony took place at the Saló de Cent of the Barcelona City Hall on March 29th, 2022. 

Akin Ayberk Cilekoglu: Akin A. Cilekoglu will join the Department of International Trade and Innovation at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. Under the supervision of Prof. Claudia Steinwender, he will be investigating the effects of firm behaviour on wage inequality arising from trade and innovation activities and firms’ behaviour in product and labor and labor markets. During his visiting in Munich, he will be analysing the role of firms in generating wage inequality and the simultaneous impacts of market failure in various markets. 

Liliana Cuccu: Liliana Cuccu has been accepted at the University of Sheffield, under the supervision of Prof. Philip McCann. She will keep working on her research focused on investigating whether technological progress could exacerbate regional divergence by acting on the geographic distribution of old and new jobs. Besides analyzing the economic consequences of unevenly distributed technological progress, she is interested in exploring how the growing adoption of new technologies can contribute to the emergence of a geography of discontent and have a role in triggering the so-called revenge of places that don’t matter. 

Marianna Magagnoli: Marianna Magagnoli has been accepted to the Geographic Data Science Lab, hosted at the University of Liverpool, under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Arribas-Bel. From September until November 2022, her research focuses on the role played by sustainable mobility in shaping the urban environment. By interacting with top experts in the field, the research stay will give her a perspective on how geographic data science methods can be applied to her data-based research on urban and transport economics. 

Ghizlen Ouasbaa: Ghizlen Ouasbaa investigates the role played by different economic shocks in shaping the local economy. Specifically, she studies the effects of specialization in the construction and tourism sector. From February to May 2022, she will be visiting the Université Paris-Saclay (RITM) hosted by Prof. Miren Lafourcade. There she will keep working on her research focused on the study of the socioeconomic contribution of the tourism sector to local economies. 

Claudia Serra: Clàudia Serra investigates the role of redistributive policies in counteracting income inequality as well as the redistributive potential of renewable energy development. From April to June 2022, she will be visiting the Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies (UCFS) at the University of Uppsala, hosted by Professor Mikael Elinder. There she will keep working on her research focused on investigating the local impact of wind farms development and the redistributive impact of decentralized tax designs.

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