Inga Heiland

Welcome  

I am an assistant professor in the Economics Department at the University of Oslo. My research interests include topics in international trade, international finance, and migration.

Contact Details

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Research in progress  

Global Risk Sharing Through Trade in Goods and Assets: Theory and Evidence

Firms facing uncertain demand at the time of production expose their shareholders to volatile returns. Risk-averse investors trading multiple assets will favor stocks that tend to yield high returns in bad times, that is, when the marginal utility of consumption is high. In this paper, I develop a firm-level gravity model of trade with risk-averse investors to show that firms seeking to maximize their present value will take into account that shareholders discount expected profits depending on the correlation with their expected marginal utility of consumption. The model predicts that, ceteris paribus, firms sell more to markets where profits covary less with the income of their investors. This holds true even in the presence of complete and internationally integrated financial markets. To test the model's prediction, I use data on stock returns to estimate covariances between demand growth in export markets and expected marginal utility growth of investors in 21 countries. I then show that the covariance pattern is reflected in the pattern of these countries' exports across destination markets and time within narrowly defined product-level categories, as predicted by the model. I conclude that by maximizing shareholder value, exporters are actively engaged in global risk sharing. [PDF]

Heterogeneous Workers, Trade, and Migration, with W. Kohler

We develop a model that combines monopolistic competition on goods markets with skill-type heterogeneity on the labor market to analyze the effects of trade and migration on welfare and inequality. Skill-type heterogeneity and partial specificity to firms’ endogenously chosen skill requirements lead to endogenous worker-firm match quality, endogenous wage markups, and within-firm wage inequality. We identify novel effects of trade and migration. Trade enhances firms’ monopsony power on the labor market and worsens the average quality of worker-firm matches, but the gains from trade theorem survives. Integration of labor markets leads to twoway migration between symmetric countries. Migration enhances competitiveness on the labor market and tends to increase the average quality of worker-firm matches. Trade and migration are complements. Our model clearly advocates opening up labor markets simultaneously with trade liberalization. [CESifo Working Paper No. 7355, 2018] under review


Export Market Risk and the Role of State Credit Guarantees, with E. Yalcin [CESifo Working Paper No. 5176, 2015] under review


Undoing Europe in a New Quantitative Trade Model, with G. Felbermayr and J. Groeschl [ifo Working Paper No. 250, 2018]


Going Deep: The Trade and Welfare Effects of TTIP Revised, with R. Aichele and G. Felbermayr [ifo Working Paper No. 219, 2016] This paper updates the results presented in Going Deep: The Trade and Welfare Effects of TTIP. [CESifo Working Paper No. 5150, 2014]


Mitigating Liquidity Constraints: Public Export Credit Guarantees in Germany, with G. Felbermayr and E. Yalcin [CESifo Working Paper No. 3908, 2012] R&R Review of International Economics.


Publications in academic journals  

Where is the Value Added? Trade Liberalization and Production Networks, with R. Aichele Journal of International Economics, 115, 2018, 130-144. [Preprint][Online appendix] [Data and code]

TTIP and Intra-European Trade: Boon or Bane?, with R. Aichele and G. Felbermayr

Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik / Journal of Economics and Statistics, 236(6), 2016, 639–664. [ifo Working Paper No. 220, 2016]


Other publications