MURAT A CELIK
https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/graduate-program/candidates/murat-celik
celik@sas.upenn.edu
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
MANOVSKI@ ECON. UPENN.EDU
Placement Director: Iourii Manovskii
Placement Director: Andrew Postlewaite
Graduate Student Coordinator: Kelly Quinn
APOSTLEW@ECON.UPENN.EDU
KQUINN @ ECON. UPENN.EDU
215-898-6880
215-898-7350
215-898-5691
Office Contact Information
3718 Locust Walk, 160 McNeil Building
Philadelphia, PA, 19104
Phone: +1 (215) 285-7848
Personal Information: September 26, 1987, Male, Turkish, F-1 Visa.
Undergraduate Studies:
Bachelor of Arts, Economics (Minor in Mathematics), Sabanci University, Valedictorian, 2010
Graduate Studies:
University of Pennsylvania, 2010 to present
Thesis Title: “Essays on Building Growth from Ideas”
Expected Completion Date: June 2016
Thesis Committee and References:
Professor Ufuk Akcigit (advisor)
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 E 59th Street
Chicago, IL, 60637
+1 (773) 702-0433
uakcigit@uchicago.edu
Professor Daron Acemoglu
Department of Economics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Building E18, Room 269D
Cambridge, MA, 02142
+1 (617) 253-1927
daron@mit.edu
Professor Jeremy Greenwood (advisor)
Department of Economics
University of Pennsylvania
3718 Locust Walk, 160 McNeil Building
Philadelphia, PA, 19104
+1 (215) 898-1505
recommendations@jeremygreenwood.net
Teaching and Research Fields:
Macroeconomics, Economic Growth
Teaching Experience:
Spring, 2014
Fall, 2013
Spring, 2012-2013
Fall, 2012
Fall, 2012
Fall, 2011
Money and Banking, Teaching Assistant for Prof. Harold Cole
Introduction to Microeconomics, Instructor
Graduate Macroeconomic Theory II, Recitation Instructor for Prof. Harold
Cole and Prof. Jeremy Greenwood
Economics of Family, Teaching Assistant for Prof. Jeremy Greenwood
Decision Making, Teaching Assistant for Prof. Anqi Li
Intermediate Macroeconomics, Recitation Instructor for Prof. Jesus
Fernandez-Villaverde
Professional Activities:
Presentations:
Macroeconomics Across Time and Space (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
and NBER) (scheduled - 2015)
Globalisation and Economic Policy (U of Nottingham) (2015)
Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Dynamics (2014)
Bilkent University Macroeconomics Jamboree (2014)
Koc University Winter Workshop (2013)
Sabanci University Seminar (2013)
University of Pennsylvania Macro Club (2013, 2014, 2015)
Referee for:
International Economic Review, Review of Economic Dynamics
Honors, Fellowships and Awards:
2015-2016
SAS Dissertation Completion Fellowship (University of Pennsylvania)
2014-2015
Maloof Family Dissertation Fellowship in Economics
2010-2015
Lawrence R. Klein Fellowship
2010-2011
Pew Presidential Fellow
2010
Sakip Sabanci Award (Sabanci University Valedictorian)
Publications in Journals:
“Buy, Keep, or Sell: Economic Growth and the Market For Ideas” (with Ufuk Akcigit and Jeremy
Greenwood, Econometrica, forthcoming)
This paper develops an operational concept of technological propinquity between new ideas which are
the seeds of economic growth, and the firms which transform these ideas into consumer products and
processes. The empirical analysis, conducted by combining firm balance sheet data of U.S. public firms
with patent grant and sale micro data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, reveals three
new stylized facts: (1) Patents that are (technologically) closer to the innovating firm contribute more to
its market value. (2) Patents that are more distant are more likely to be sold to other firms. (3) When a
patent is transferred between two firms, it is closer to the buyer firm than the seller firm on average. An
endogenous growth model is developed in accordance with these facts, where each period firms invest in
researching and developing new ideas. An idea increases a firm's productivity. By how much depends on
the technological propinquity between an idea and the firm's line of business. Ideas can be bought and
sold on a market for patents. A firm can sell an idea that is not relevant to its business or buy one if it
fails to innovate. The developed model is matched up via indirect inference with the obtained stylized
facts about the market for patents in the United States. The calibrated model is then used to gauge how
efficiency in the patent market affects economic growth.
Research Papers:
“Does the Cream Always Rise to the Top? The Misallocation of Talent in Innovation” (Job Market
Paper)
The misallocation of talent between routine production versus innovation activities is found to have a
first-order impact on the welfare and growth prospects of an economy. Surname level empirical analysis
employing micro-data on patents and inventors in the United States between 1975-2008 combined with
U.S. census data from 1930 reveals new stylized facts: (1) People from richer backgrounds have a higher
probability of becoming an inventor; but this is not the case for those from more educated backgrounds.
(2) People from more educated backgrounds become more prolific inventors; but those from richer
backgrounds show no such aptitude. Motivated by this discrepancy, a heterogeneous agents model with
production and innovation sectors is developed, where individuals can become inventors even if they are
of mediocre talent by excessive spending on credentialing. This is individually rational but socially
inefficient. The model is calibrated to match the new stylized facts and data moments from the U.S.
economy, and is then used to measure the magnitude of the misallocation of talent in innovation. A
thought experiment in which the credentialing spending channel is shut down reveals that the aggregate
growth rate of the economy can be increased by 10% of its value through a reduction of misallocation.
Optimal progressive bequest taxes that alleviate the misallocation are calculated. This serves to increase
social welfare by 6.20% in consumption equivalent terms.
“Young, Restless, and Creative: Openness to Disruption and Creative Innovations” (with Daron
Acemoglu and Ufuk Akcigit, Submitted)
Openness to new, unconventional and disruptive ideas is argued to have a first-order impact on creative
innovations that break new ground in terms of knowledge creation. A motivating model focusing on the
choice between incremental and radical innovation is developed. This choice has implications for how
managers of different ages and human capital are sorted across firms that differ in terms of openness to
disruption. Empirical analysis presents firm-level, patent-level and cross-country evidence consistent
with the predictions of the model. Creativity of innovations as embodied in U.S. patents is measured
using different metrics such as the average number of citations per patent, the fraction of superstar
inventors, the likelihood of being at the tail of the citation distribution and generality in terms of the
technology classes of citing patents. Based on the idea that only companies or societies open to
disruption will allow the young to rise up within the hierarchy, the main proxy chosen for this
unobserved characteristic is manager age. Using the manager age proxy at the firm, patent and country
levels, we present robust evidence that once the effect of the sorting of young managers to firms that are
more open to disruption is factored in, the (causal) impact of manager age on creative innovations is
small. Hence, it is concluded that the firms (and countries) which hire younger managers are more
creative because of their unobserved openness to disruption characteristic, as opposed to the direct effect
of hiring young managers instead of older ones.
“Patents as Collateral and Directed Technological Change” (Research in progress with Ufuk
Akcigit, Olga Itenberg and Guillermo Ordonez)
In recent years, and in spite of their intangible nature, patents have been increasingly used as collateral.
We show that this financial innovation has disproportionately drawn firm entry into more crowded
innovative industries, those where patents are easier to trade. We study the effects of the use of patents
as collateral in a multi-sector endogenous growth framework with expanding input varieties, where the
intermediate sectors differ in market size. Our model predicts that the use of patents as collateral directs
future technological progress towards sectors with more patenting firms, which are not necessarily the
most productive sectors. Even though the use of patents as collateral relaxes financial frictions, they also
have the potential to direct technological innovation inefficiently, which we explore quantitatively.
Languages: English (fluent), German (advanced), Turkish (native).
Computational Skills: Matlab, Fortran, C++, Stata.