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Matilde Bombardini is an Italian-Canadian economist, who is a Professor of Economics of International Trade at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver. She is a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) in the Institutions, Organisations & Growth Program since June 2007and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) for the Political Economy Program since April 2009. She sits as an Advisory Committee Member for the Empirical Investigations in International Trade (EIIT) conference every year since November 2006. Apart from being revered as a Distinguished Scholar at the Sauder School of Business, she is also the Co-Editor of the Journal of International Economics since September 2017.

Early Life and Education

Bombardini began her undergraduate studies in the field of Economics at Universita’di Bologna and graduated as Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Economics with a Magna cum Laude in the year 2000. During her time as an undergraduate student, she went for an exchange program to The University of California, Berkeley (UCB) in the year 1998-1999 where she discovered her interest in empirical research surrounding trade. In 2004, she was the winner of the EIIT (Empirical Investigation in International Trade) Graduate Student Competition. On September 2005, she completed her PhD in Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Upon completing her PhD, she was appointed as assistant professor of Economics at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and has been in UBC ever since. Although, she was also the visiting assistant professor for a year at The Booth School of Business at University of Chicago from August 2009 to June 2010. She was promoted to associate professor at UBC in July 2013 and was also a visiting associate professor for a year at Stanford University from August 2017 to July 2018.

Career

After earning her PhD in 2005, she was appointed as an assistant professor at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver.In July 2013, she was promoted to associate professor at The University of British Columbia. Her work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Canadian Journal of Economics, the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of International Economics. Bombardini is a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and an Advisory Committee Member for the Empirical Investigations in International Trade (EIIT) conference.

Publications

Bombardini has published numerous papers, receiving 1,222 citations as of 2019.

In July 2008, her research on “Firm Heterogeneity and Lobby Participation” got published in the Journal of International Economics. In her paper, she constructs a model that showcases how in the presence of a fixed cost of channeling political contributions, individual firms determine the amount of resources that are to be assigned to political contributions, which is effective for a lobby to be formed by the largest firms in the sector.

In August 2011, her research in collaboration with Francesco Trebbi on the subject of  “Votes or Money? Theory and Evidence from the US Congress” got published in the Journal of Public Economics. The paper inspects the link between the amount of contributions made to politicians by interest groups and the size of interest groups in terms of voter representation.

In May 2012, her research in collaboration with Francesco Trebbi on the subject of “Competition and Political Organisation: Together or Alone in Lobbying for Trade Policy?” got published in the Journal of International Economics. In this paper, they measure the degree of within sector political organisation across U.S industries by using a data set on lobbying expenditures of different U.S industries.

In May 2012, her research in collaboration with Peter Morrow and Christopher Kurz on the subject of “Firm Heterogeneity and Ricardian Trade: The Impact of Domestic Competition on Export Performance” got published in the Canadian Journal of Economics. Through an empirical model, this paper aims to look at the quantitative difference in productivity within and across different industries under small open economies.

In August 2012, her research in collaboration with Germán Pupato and Giovanni Gallipoli on “Skill Dispersion and Trade Flows” got published in the American Economic Review. In this paper, her research explores whether skills dispersion is a source of comparative advantage.

In December 2012, her research in collaboration with Francesco Trebbi on the subject of “Risk Aversion and Expected Utility Theory: An Experiment with Large and Small Stakes” got published in the Journal of the European Economic Association. Through a structural econometric model, they estimate the decisions players take under risk in a game show where lotteries present payoffs in excess of half a million dollars.

In March 2014, her research in collaboration with Germán Pupato and Giovanni Gallipoli on the subject of “Unobservable Skill Dispersion and Comparative Advantage” got published in the Journal of International Economics. This paper created a tractable multi-sector model across multiple countries of international trade with unobservable skills in the labor market.

In December 2014, her research in collaboration with Marianne Bertrand and Francesco Trebbi called “Is It Whom You Know or What You Know? An Empirical Assessment of the Lobbying Process” got published in the American Economic Review. In this paper, they empirically evaluate whether lobbyists give issue specific information and special interests access to politicians.

In March 2019, her research in collaboration with Maria Titi and Gianluca Orefice on the subject “Does Exporting Improve Matching? Evidence from French Employer-Employee Data” got published in the Journal of International Economics. Using a French matched employer-employee data set, they explore the hiring decisions of exporting companies versus non-exporting companies.

Her research on “Trade, Pollution and Mortality in China” in collaboration with Bingjing Li is going to be published in the Forthcoming Journal of International Economics. In this paper, they look at the role of rapid expansion of exports in China between 1990 and 2010 and if it had any part to play in the contribution to China’s worsening environment quality.

Her research on “Empirical Models of Lobbying” in collaboration with Francesco Trebbi is going to be published in the Forthcoming Annual Review of Economics In this paper, they examine the empirical literature on lobbying within Political Economy.

Her research on “Corporate Philanthropy as a Tool for Political Influence” in collaboration with Marianne Bertrand, Ray Fisman and Francesco Trebbi is conditionally accepted by American Economic Review. In this paper they examine the  ways in which charitable giving can affect political influence.

Research in Progress

Her current research focus is simultaneously working on three different projects concerning Political Economy and International Trade. Her first project explores the association between pollution and trade in China. Together with Francesco Trebbi and a team of research assistants, her second project explores the subject of financial regulation, especially the ways in which the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform of 2010 is implemented. Her third project focuses on the influence of trade and the link between workers and firms.

Awards

Bombardini has been awarded several awards and grants. In 2012, she won the CWEN (Canadian Women Economists Network) award for her influential work in the intersection of political economy and international trade. In 2013, she was the recipient of the Harry G. Johnson Prize for best paper in the Canadian Journal of Economics. In 2015, Bombardini received the Bank of Canada Governor’s Award for being one of the best young trade economists in Canada. In 2017, she won the Killam Research Prize  in the Junior Category for Arts and Humanities at the University of British Columbia for her contribution in Political Economy and International Trade.