{"id":4999,"date":"2026-01-28T15:45:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T14:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/?p=4999"},"modified":"2026-02-06T11:46:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T10:46:37","slug":"intangibles-innovation-and-competition-a-conversation-with-the-econometric-society-best-paper-awardee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/?p=4999","title":{"rendered":"Intangibles, Innovation, and Competition: A Conversation With the Econometric Society Best Paper Awardee"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this interview, the recent AMES-CSW<\/a> Best Paper Award 2026 recipient Cagin Keskin<\/a> discusses the ideas behind his award-winning research, which explores how firms\u2019 diversification decisions shape innovation, competition, and long-term economic growth. He reflects on the methodological innovations that made the project possible, the policy questions it helps answer, and how this work fits into his broader research agenda on the role of intangibles and firm heterogeneity in modern economies.<\/em><\/p>\n

How was it to receive the Econometric Society best paper prize? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It was exciting to receive this award at such an outstanding conference organized by the Econometric Society, and above all, it has motivated me to continue pursuing rigorous and impactful research.<\/p>\n

If you had to explain your paper to an economist outside your field in one sentence, what would you say?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When firms diversify across industries, they invest less in R&D and more in firm-specific assets, which raises profits but reduces competition and long-run growth, suggesting that policies should consider the scope of firm activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis award recognizes years of work\u2014and it reinforces my commitment to studying how firm decisions shape innovation, competition, and long-run growth.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is the key methodological or empirical innovation in the paper? <\/strong><\/p>\n

The key innovation of this paper is to distinguish intangible assets into transferable (e.g., patent) and embedded (e.g., brand value) and measuring their composition at the segment level. This allows me to empirically document how firms shift their investment as they expand across industries. Motivated by this pattern, I develop an endogenous growth model that captures both vertical and horizontal innovation and intangible heterogeneity, which provides a micro-founded explanation for firms\u2019 investment decisions and innovation direction.<\/p>\n

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Cagin Keskin at CERGE-EI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What real-world or policy-relevant question does your paper help answer, and what\u2019s the main implication?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This paper addresses a policy-relevant question: in an intangible-intensive economy, which policies are most effective at improving welfare? I show that scope-targeted policies that account for innovation externalities outperform size-based tools: they avoid penalizing firms that generate large knowledge spillovers, reduce barriers to entry, and thereby increase aggregate productivity and welfare.<\/p>\n

What was the hardest part of the project (data, identification, theory, computation), and how did you solve it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most challenging part was integrating the empirical evidence, theoretical model, and simulation into a single, coherent narrative. I regularly discussed each new result with my advisors and over time, these conversations deepened my understanding. Eventually, the empirical patterns, model mechanisms, and computational results started to speak to each other \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

What are next steps that you would like to do with you paper? What\u2019s the natural next extension of your research? And what are you working on now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My immediate next step is to refine the paper based on feedback. Over the next few months, I plan to focus on these improvements to turn the paper into a submission for publication.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m deeply grateful for this recognition. It encourages me to push further in understanding the forces that drive productivity and welfare in modern economies.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A natural extension of this work would be to examine whether embedded intangibles slow down the diffusion of ideas across the economy. Leveraging richer microdata and dynamic structural methods could yield deeper insights into how different classes of intangibles shape knowledge diffusion and innovation networks across firms and industries.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>How does this paper fit into your broader research agenda? What kind of research questions do you want to pursue in the next few years?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This paper is part of my broader research agenda, which focuses on how firm-level decisions shape macroeconomic outcomes such as productivity growth, market structure, and welfare. In the coming years, I plan to study the rise of the intangible economy and its interactions with ICT adoption, trade, and skill supply; investigate M&A network effects, focusing on how acquisitions reshape firms and their production networks; and explore the role of firm-specific intangibles in R&D spillovers, entry barriers, and industry dynamics.<\/p>\n

Across these projects, I aim to integrate rich administrative data, causal identification, and theoretical models to understand the impact of firm heterogeneity on macroeconomic outcomes and to evaluate policies that enhance social welfare.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this interview, the recent AMES-CSW Best Paper Award 2026 recipient Cagin Keskin discusses the ideas behind his award-winning research, which explores how firms\u2019 diversification decisions shape innovation, competition, and long-term economic growth. He reflects on the methodological innovations that made the project possible, the policy questions it helps answer, and how this work fits … Continue reading Intangibles, Innovation, and Competition: A Conversation With the Econometric Society Best Paper Awardee<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":5002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,1,59,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awards","category-uncategorized","category-interview","category-research"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4999"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5021,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4999\/revisions\/5021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cerge-ei.cz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}