Four UB School Of Economics PhD Students Awarded SEBAP Mobility Grants

From a total of 15 mobility scholarships, 4 research mobility grants by the Barcelona Economic Society of Friends of the Country (SEBAP) have been awarded to the UB School of Economics. The recipients are Gerard Domènech, Ragip Kaan Erdemli, Abhinav Khemka and Darío Serrano-Puente.

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 Padova, the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, University of California, Berkeley and the University College London. The award ceremony took place at the Saló de Cent of the Barcelona City Hall on March 16, 2023.

Gerard Domènech: Gerard will join the Department of Economics and Management “Marco Fanno” of the University of Padova under the supervision of Prof. Orestis Troumpounis. The objective of his research stay is to formally explore relevant topics in Political Economy, such as polarization and abstention. Working in a department with top researchers on formal models of domestic policies will also be useful in order to get feedback on the last two chapters of his thesis.

Ragip Kaan Erdemli: Ragip will join the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE). Under the supervision of Prof. Simon Martin, he will be investigating how price transparency policies affect firms’ markups and welfare. For that purpose, he uses data from fuel retail market in Sydney Metropolitan Area, Australia, where a transparency policy about fuel prices was implemented.

Abhinav Khemka: Abhinav will join the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Prof. Pradeep K Chhibber. During his research stay, Abhinav will concentrate on advancing his current research, focused on understanding the nexus between criminals and politicians in India.

Darío Serrano-Puente: Dario will be visiting the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in London. He will be also in strong connection to the University College London (UCL), and he will be hosted by Anne Brockmeyer, who is currently the Research Director of the Centre for Tax Analysis in Developing Countries at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. His research focuses mainly on taxation and public finance issues. In particular, he is conducting a research on how households and firms respond to government policies like taxes, regulations, and public-spending policies.

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