“During the last two years, the Covid pandemic has made travelling to other universities and collaborating in person very difficult. With the help of the YERUN RMA, I have been able to overcome some of the obstacles of the online setting of my research collaboration with Marta Fernandez de Arroyabe Arranz, who is Senior Lecturer at the Strategy, Operations and Entrepreneurship group of the University of Essex. Dr. Fernandez de Arroyabe Arranz is an expert in the literature on firm innovation and has conducted multiple empirical studies in the field. It was a great opportunity for me to combine my knowledge on theoretical econometrics of nonlinear panel data models and my programming expertise with her experience in empirical data analysis. Our joint project tackles a challenging econometric problem that arises in the analysis of firm innovation with unobserved firm-level heterogeneity. Combining our respective knowledge has been very beneficial for both the host and the guest researcher. “
.
About the collaboration:
The research collaboration between Martin Schumann (Assistant Professor, Maastricht University) and the host Marta Fernandez de Arroyabe Arranz (Senior Lecturer, University of Essex) tackles a problem at the intersection of econometric theory and applied studies on innovation in the management literature. Specifically, firm innovation, which is often regarded as a main driver of macroeconomic growth, is modeled as a nonlinear decision-making process of firms.
The collaboration has turned out as very beneficial for both parties. Besides the current project on the distinction between random and fixed effects models in nonlinear panel data models, further collaborations have been initiated. For instance, some of the insights had spillover effects to a working paper on the persistence of innovation, which is now forthcoming under the title “On the Estimation of True State Dependence in the Persistence of Innovation” in the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics (open access). Moreover, the two co-authors are currently working on a text mining project on the entrepreneurial university.
.
About Martin Schumann:
Martin Schumann is Assistant Professor of econometrics at Maastricht University. Before joining Maastricht University in September 2019, he obtained his PhD from the University of Luxembourg in 2017 and spent two years as postdoctoral researcher at the TU Dortmund and the Ruhr-University Bochum. His research focusses on the analysis of nonlinear panel data models with unobserved heterogeneity.
