Publications

Arpaci-Ayhan, S. (2023). Foreign Aid as Catalyst for Improving Productive Capabilities in Recipients. Journal of International Development, 35(5), 738-760. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3706

Work Under Review

Economic Security: A Systematic and Methodological Literature Analysis

-This research explores the political and economic dimensions of economic security, developing an interdisciplinary framework that integrates how these two fields define, conceptualize, and assess the concept. It systematically reviews empirical studies that measure the outcomes of economic security measures using a range of quantitative methods, including causal inference, forecasting, and machine learning techniques. The study identifies key data sources to leverage future works. It also highlights the growing importance of power dynamics in economic security, with particular attention to network analysis. It concludes by outlining current limitations in the literature and discussing the implications for the future of multilateral cooperation in an era of increasing geoeconomic fragmentation.

Work in Progress

FDI, Relocations, and Innovation

-Geoeconomic fragmentation is reshaping global patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI), prompting the relocation of production and innovation activities across borders. This research examines how FDI relocations affect knowledge diffusion and innovation outcomes by tracing patent citations over time. It combines industry- and country-level FDI data with comprehensive patent dataset from PATSTAT to empirically assess two key questions: (i) how current FDI relocations affect global patenting trends, and (ii) whether technological complementarities between partner countries attract greater FDI inflows. The findings provide critical policy insights into how governments and firms can respond to emerging protectionist measures and navigate the evolving global landscape.

-In collaboration with the World Bank East Asia & Pacific Chief Economist Research Center.

Working Paper

Environmental Policies, Institutional Quality, and Green Innovation

In this article, I estimate the impact of environmental policies on environment- friendly patents. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the joint effect of environmental policy stringency with institutional quality. Panel data covers 31 countries from 1990 to 2019. Due to the count nature of patent data my model has a Poisson distribution. I use a pre-sample mean estimator to control for country fixed effects and to deal with heterogeneity among countries. Contrary to the induced innovation hypothesis, increased oil and electricity prices do not necessarily cause to more green innovation at the country-level. In line with scholars who emphasize the necessity of government intervention to tackle climate change, countries with more stringent policies, and bureaucratic quality perform better innovative activity in environment-friendly technologies. Finally, using instrumental variable strategy with control function approach confirms that the effect of policies on innovation is causal.