Philipp Kircher (University of Edinburgh)

Title:  Matching, Sorting and the Distributional Effects of International Trade (PDF)

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The Senior Academic Seminar is the principal regular research event in the School's calendar. Speakers of the highest calibre are invited to present on topics that will attract interest among the full community of faculty, research fellows and PhD scholars. On 12/11/2014 the School welcomed Philipp Kircher from the University of Edinburgh who gave a talk with the title “Matching, Sorting and the Distributional Impact of International Trade”.

In this paper Philipp (joint with Elhanan Helpman and Gene Grossman) explores the consequences of trade when both capital and labour are heterogeneous and output depends not only on the capital-labour ratio but also on the matched types. Trade induces across-sector sorting and within sector re-matching between capital and labour types, affecting both across and within-sector wage inequality.

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Philipp Kircher

Philipp Kircher received his PhD in Economics from the University of Bonn in 2006 and since then he has had a fast and remarkable career. He has worked as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, an associate professor at the Oxford University, and as a full professor at the London School of Economics. Currently he is a professor at the School of Economics at the University of Edinburgh. He is a world leader in theoretical macro labour research. His work mainly focuses on the sorting of firms and workers and on the effects of competition for labour on market outcomes. He has also side-interests in social preferences and disease transmission. He is currently a co-editor of the prestigious Review of Economic Studies, and has publishes his research in leading academic journals, including Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Review of Economic Studies.