I am an empirical economist with research interests in urban economics, labour economics, economic history, and cultural economics. My research has touched on several subfields of economics, including migration, agglomeration of economic activity, and the economic history of the arts. I use novel, historical datasets to study the migration and geographic clustering of creative workers and to identify agglomeration effects associated with artistic clusters. My most recent research has also used these historical data to study gender and racial gaps in literature.
I am currently a postdoc at the Department of Business and Economics at the University of Southern Denmark, where I contribute to the INCULTUM project (Horizon 2020 project). I previously worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chair of Urban, Regional, and International Economics (URI) at TU Dortmund. I received a PhD in Economics from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). I was one of the inaugural Grattan Scholars at Trinity College Dublin, and I was selected as an Irish Research Council Fellow at the 5th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting on Economic Sciences. I received my MSc in Economics and MPhil in International Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), and a BA in Economics from Hendrix College (USA).
I worked as a Research Associate for the Institute of Public Administration (IPA), a recognised college of University College Dublin (UCD). In this position, I provided research, analytical, and statistical assistance as part of an Independent Secretariat for the Expert Commission on the Domestic Public Water Services. I also worked as a Research Economist for Indecon Economic Consultants in Dublin, Ireland, where I contributed to a number of economic impact assessments, policy reviews, and other assignments for various government departments and agencies.
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About
Professional Experience
| Oct 2021 - present | Postdoctoral Researcher |
| Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark | |
| June 2018 - Sep 2021 | Postdoctoral Researcher |
| Chair of Urban, Regional, and International Economics | |
| Department of Economics, Technical University Dortmund | |
| Jan. 2017 - June 2018 | Research Economist |
| Indecon Economic Consultants, Dublin | |
| Aug. 2016 - June 2018 | Research Associate |
| Independent Secretariat for the Expert Commission on the Domestic Public Water Services | |
| UCD Institute of Public Administration | |
| Sep. 2013 - Aug 2016 | Lecturer |
| Mathematics and Statistics | |
| Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin | |
| Jan. 2015 - Aug 2015 | Lecturer |
| Economic and Policy Analysis II | |
| Masters in Development Practice, Trinity College Dublin |
Education
| 2012-2016 | PhD in Economics |
| Thesis Title: Essays on Agglomeration Economies in Literature | |
| Committee: Prof. John O'Hagan (Supervisor); Dr. Martina Kirchberger (Internal Examiner); Prof. John McHale (External Examiner) | |
| 2011-2012 | MSc in Economics |
| Department of Economics | |
| Trinity College Dublin | |
| 2010-2011 | MPhil in International Peace Studies |
| Irish School of Ecumenics | |
| Trinity College Dublin | |
| 2006-2010 | BA in Economics |
| Department of Economics and Business | |
| Hendrix College | |
| ISEP Semester Exchange Programme 2009, Växjö University (Sweden) | |
| Summer Exchange Programme 2008, Akita International University (Japan) |
Other Information
| Affiliations: | European Economic Association, Urban Economics Association, Economic History Association, Economic History Society, Association for Cultural Economics International |
| Computer languages: | STATA ado, R, TeX, Markdown, HTML, CSS |
| Software & IDEs: | STATA, IntelliJ IDEA, GitHub, Overleaf, TexStudio, RStudio |
| Languages: | English (native), Portuguese (upper intermediate), Spanish (basic), Danish (basic) |
| Find Me: | RePeC Author Page, ORCiD, Google Scholar, LinkedIn |
Contact
| sabe (at) sdu.dk | |
| Phone | TBD |
| Address | University of Southern Denmark Department of Business and Economics Campusvej 55 DK-5230 Odense M Denmark |
Research
Research Overview
I am an empirical economist with research interests in urban economics, labour economics, economic history, and cultural economics. My research has touched on several subfields of economics, including migration, agglomeration of economic activity, and economic history of the arts. I use novel, historical datasets to study the migration and geographic clustering of creative workers and to identify agglomeration effects associated with artistic clusters. This work has involved extensive data collection, including the collection of automatically extracted data from structured data sources and the manual transcription of richer biographical information from unstructured data into a structured database.
My current research addresses the rise and decline of literary clusters, the migration of authors, patterns of agglomeration and co-agglomeration in creative industries, market forces in the development of literary clusters, individual life-cycle productivity of authors, and gender and racial gaps in authorship. I utilises data on individual authors spanning more than 200 years, allowing me the understand how historical events impact the life-cycle productivity of individual innovative agents. My research indicates that writers were extremely mobile relative to the general population, and that birth location and death location play a marginal role in lifetime productivity. Thus, the use of detailed lifetime information provides important insights into the circumstances of idea creation for those engaged in innovative and creative industries.
This work takes on increasing relevance in the current environment where traditional channels enabling knowledge spillovers, such as repeated face-to-face interaction, are limited. In the current situation, traditional literary salons cannot operate and artists are forced to explore new avenues for collaboration. Historical research on the impact of co-location and barriers to social interaction, such as war or the 1918 Flu Pandemic, on productivity may provide insights into how the current pandemic will impact creative and innovative production.
Publications
London calling? Agglomeration economies in literature since 1700. Journal of Urban Economics, 2019
This paper utilises a unique, purpose-built panel dataset on prominent authors in the UK and Ireland born 1700–1925 to estimate the productivity gains associated with agglomeration of an industry with few capital requirements and no apparent need to cluster geographically. I find the average author experiences productivity gains of 11.94% per annum when residing in London, the only major literary cluster – a gain not associated with living in any of the minor literary clusters. I find evidence of negative selection with respect to productivity, indicating the results are not driven by the self-selection of highly productive authors to London. I find heterogeneity of returns to living in London by birth cohort and Impact Index quartile (a measure of author quality) and that the cohorts who receive the greatest gains from locating in London are those for which there is the strongest evidence of negative selection with respect to productivity.
Other Research
Manhattan Transfer: Productivity effects of agglomeration in American authorship (with Lukas Kuld and Christiane Hellmanzik) Submitted
Market structure and creative cluster formation: The origins of urban clusters in German literature, 1700-1932 (with Lukas Kuld) Submitted
How entrepreneurial are Airbnb hosts in rural regions? An exploratory profiling study from three Nordic regions (with Karol Borowiecki, Birgit Leick, Evgueni Vinogradov, Guðrún Þóra Gunnarsdóttir, Jie Zhang, Susanne Gretzinger, Vera Vilhjálmsdóttir) In progress
Tourism activity at cultural heritage sites during and after the COVID-19 pandemic: New real-time indicator obtained from a leading travel portal (with Karol Borowiecki) In progress
Women's property rights and creative production: Evidence from American authorship 1800-1999 (with Christiane Hellmanzik and Lukas Kuld) In progress
The "Motherhood Penalty" in artistic production: Historical evidence from American authors, 1800-1999 (with Christiane Hellmanzik and Lukas Kuld) In progress
Localisation effects in literature: Peer quantity, quality, or productivity? Working Paper
The Economic Geography of American Artists, Postbellum to World War II (with Lukas Kuld and Amir B. Ferreira Neto) In progress <\a>
Research Presentations
| Lund FRESH Meeting 2021 | November 2021 | Lund, Sweden |
| North American Meeting of the Urban Economics Association | October 2021 | Online |
| Florida Gulf Coast University Seminar Series (invited speaker) | September 2021 | Online |
| International Conference on Cultural Economics (ACEI 2020+1) | July 2021 | Online |
| Annual Meeting of the Southern Economics Association/North American Cultural Economics Workshop | November 2019 | Fort Lauderdale (FL), USA |
| European Workshop on Applied Cultural Economics | September 2019 | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| International Conference on Computational and Methodological Statistics (CFE-CMStatistics) | December 2018 | Pisa, Italy |
| Irish Quantitative History Annual Meeting | January 2016 | Dublin, Ireland |
| European Workshop on Applied Cultural Economics | September 2015 | Vienna, Austria |
| World Economic History Congress | August 2015 | Kyoto, Japan |
| Creative Networks and Cultural Output Workshop (Co-Organised with TCD School of English) | June 2015 | Dublin, Ireland |
| Irish Economic Association Annual Conference | May 2015 | Dublin, Ireland |
| PUCK Project (Participation University City Kulture) Workshop | January 2014 | Bilbao, Spain |
| European Workshop on Applied Cultural Economics | September 2013 | Ljubljana, Slovenia |
Teaching
Teaching Overview
I have a broad range of experience teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate level, ranging from teaching core economic theory, math, and statistics courses to undergraduate students to teaching applied microeconomics seminars to graduate students.
During the first year of my PhD at Trinity College Dublin, I was nominated for two teaching awards for my work as a teaching assistant for the first year undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics course. I was the lecturer of the mathematics section of this course for the next three years. I also served as a teaching assistant for the second year undergraduate Intermediate Microeconomics course and as a teaching assistant and lecturer for the Economic Policy and Analysis II course in the Masters in Development Practice programme.
As a postdoc at TU Dortmund, I have taught courses and seminars on labour economics (including migration and human capital), urban economics, academic writing, and more recently, European economic integration and Brexit. In addition to teaching, I also have experience in thesis supervision: BSc Economics (4); MSc Economics (4); MSc Business Mathematics (1).
List of Courses Taught
| Academic Year 2020-2021 | Supervisor | A-Project: Reclaiming the city: Moving from over-tourism to sustainable tourism in a post-COVID world | TU Dortmund School of Spatial Planning |
| Spring 2020 | Lecturer | Economics of Brexit | TU Dortmund Department of Economics / School of Spatial Planning |
| Spring 2019 & 2020 | Lecturer | Academic Writing | TU Dortmund Department of Economics / SPRING Masters Programme |
| Spring 2019 & 2020 | Teaching Assistant | Human Capital and the Knowledge Economy | TU Dortmund Department of Economics |
| Winter Term 2018 & 2019 | Lecturer | Economics of Migration | TU Dortmund Department of Economics / School of Spatial Planning |
| Spring Term 2019 | Lecturer | Advanced Urban Economics | TU Dortmund School of Spatial Planning |
| Autumn Term 2015 | Teaching Assistant | Intermediate Microeconomics | TCD Department of Economics |
| Spring Term 2015 | Lecturer | Economic and Policy Analysis II | TCD/UCD Joint Masters in Development Practice |
| Spring Term 2014 | Teaching Assistant | Economic and Policy Analysis II | TCD/UCD Joint Masters in Development Practice |
| Autumn Term 2013-2014, Spring Term 2016 | Lecturer | Mathematics and Statistics | TCD Department of Economics |
| Autumn 2012 & Spring 2013 | Teaching Assistant | Mathematics and Statistics | TCD Department of Economics |