I am research economist with experience in both academia and the private sector. My primary research interests in urban economics, economic history, and cultural economics; although, I have contributed to research projects and policy reviews on a variety of topics.
My academic research has touched on several subfields of economics, including migration, agglomeration of economic activity, the economic history of the arts, and tourism. I have also contributed to several academic research projects on tourism in European peripheries. I often use novel, historical datasets to study the migration and geographic clustering of creative workers and to identify agglomeration effects associated with artistic clusters.
In addition to this academic work, I provided research, analytical, and statistical assistance as part of an Independent Secretariat for the Expert Commission on the Domestic Public Water Services in Ireland. While working for an economic consulting firm, I contributed to a number of economic impact assessments, policy reviews, and other assignments for various government departments and agencies. I have also used my experience with economics and panel data analysis to consult on several projects on veterinary epidemiology and the economics of animal health.
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About
Professional Experience
| Oct 2021 - Dec 2023 | 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 | |
| Nov 2022 - present | Maternity / family leave |
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
| Computer languages: | STATA ado, R, TeX, Markdown, HTML, CSS |
| Software & IDEs: | STATA, IntelliJ IDEA, GitHub, Overleaf, TexStudio, RStudio |
| Languages: | English (native), Portuguese (advanced) |
| Find Me: | RePeC Author Page, ORCiD, Google Scholar, LinkedIn |
Contact
| saroca (dot) mitchell (at) gmail.com |
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
Mitchell, S. (2019). London calling? Agglomeration economies in literature since 1700. Journal of Urban Economics, 112, 16-32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2019.05.002
Kuld, L., & Mitchell, S. (2023). Market structure and creative cluster formation: the origins of urban clusters in German literature, 1700–1932. European Review of Economic History. https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head003
Leick, B., Mitchell, S.B., Borowiecki, K.J., Vinogradov, E., Gunnarsdóttir, G.Þ., Zhang, J., Gretzinger, S. & Vilhjálmsdóttir, V. (2024), ”Professionalisation and performance of Airbnb hosts in rural regions.” International Journal of Hospitality Management 118:103680. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2023.103680
Borowiecki, K. J., Pedersen, M. U., & Mitchell, S. B. (2024). Using big data to measure cultural tourism in Europe. Tourism Economics. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548166241273604
Borowiecki, K. J., Pedersen, M. U., Mitchell, S., & Khan, S. A. (Accepted/In press). Navigating Landscapes: Approaches to Data Collection and Analysis in Tourism. In K. J. Borowiecki, A. Fresa, & J. M. M. Civantos (Eds.), Innovative Cultural Tourism in European Peripheries: Visiting the Margins. London: Routledge.
Kuld, L., Hellmanzik, C. & Mitchell, S. (Forthcoming). Manhattan Transfer: Agglomeration and productivity in American literary production. Regional Science and Urban Economics.
Other Research
Sucena Afonso, J., Mitchell, S., Driessen, R., Reader, J., Thorup, V. M., Argüello, A., Oikonomou, G., and Rushton, J. (2022). Assessing attributable impact – estimating the impact of hoof health in British dairy cattle on milk yield. In progress.
Making the list: Gender, ethnicity, and location in American literary production (with Lukas Kuld and Amir Neto). In progress.
L’artiste bohéme? The economic geography of American artists 1850-1940 (with Lukas Kuld and Amir Neto). In progress.
The ”Motherhood Penalty” in artistic production: Historical evidence from American authors, 1800-1999 (with Christiane Hellmanzik, Lukas Kuld, and Marie Paul). In progress.
Research Presentations
| INCULTUM Workshop on Data analysis and statistical tools for measuring the impact of cultural tourism (organised with support of SDU Department of Economics) | March 2022 | Online |
| 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 |