Nicholas Tokay
PhD Student in Economics
London Business School
Bio
I am a PhD student in Economics at London Business School, with research interests in macroeconomics.
Previously, I was a pre-doctoral research assistant at the Centre for Macroeconomics, London School of Economics.
I hold an MSc in Economics from the Paris School of Economics (2024) and a BSc in Economics from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (2021).
Research
My research is in macroeconomics, with interests in economic growth — in particular Schumpeterian models of innovation and creative destruction — financial macroeconomics, and environmental macroeconomics.
Working papers
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Reassessing Europe’s Productivity Slowdown: Innovating in an Energy-Constrained Economy
This paper reassesses the persistent productivity slowdown in Europe relative to the United States, emphasizing the role of energy constraints in shaping long-run growth. I show that since the early 2000s, adverse energy conditions have redirected European innovation towards energy efficiency at the expense of broader productivity-enhancing technologies. First, I empirically reveal a strong trade-off between capital/labor saving and energy saving technical change, with the marginal rate of technological substitution (the amount of resources needed to shift from capital/labor saving to get 1 percentage point of additional growth in energy saving technology) being significantly steeper in Europe than in the US. Second, I show that Europe patents more in energy efficiency, and its innovations rely disproportionately on spillovers from “Low-Tech” patents, limiting their quality and impact compared to US inventions that build on “High-Tech” patenting knowledge. Third, I develop a growth model to formalize that spillovers dampen the productivity decline when energy prices rise. Finally, I estimate, using a local projection framework, the causal effect of exogenous energy price shocks on patenting activity, instrumenting energy prices with OPEC supply news. The results suggest that Europe’s more binding energy constraints and weaker capacity to reorient innovation help explain its productivity divergence from the United States.
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Bubbles, risk-premia and misallocation: How bubbles distort credit markets
This paper investigates the interaction between speculative bubbles and credit market conditions, focusing on their implications for resource allocation within the economy. By developing a theoretical model that incorporates overlapping generations and different types of entrepreneurs (distinguished by their project viability and access to credit), I examine how bubbles influence the economic trajectory of entrepreneurial activities, particularly focusing on the creation of bubbles on the credit market and their impact on misallocation. The model suggests that while bubbles can temporarily enhance access to credit and foster investment in new entrepreneurial ventures, they also have the potential to lead to significant economic inefficiencies, primarily through the misallocation of resources towards less productive projects. This misallocation effect is exacerbated under conditions of increased credit access, as less efficient projects find it easier to secure funding. The findings are validated empirically using a dataset that tracks entrepreneurial activities and credit market conditions over several years on the North-American market.
Policy
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Presentation of the “Mésange Vert” module
Contact
London Business School
Regent's Park
London NW1 4SA