Manuel Tong Koecklin

Manuel joined the ESRI team in October 2017 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Internationalisation and Competitiveness. He is a trade economist, in the process of finishing his PhD in Economics at the University of Sussex. He was awarded the MSc degree in International Economics at the same university, and the bachelor degree in Economics at Universidad del Pacifico (Lima, Peru). His research addresses, theoretically and empirically, the export decisions firms make in a particular market, using large micro-datasets at the firm-product-destination level. He is particularly focused on firms’ decision to introduce products sequentially in the market of interest, and the role of trade liberalisation in shaping that strategy.

His recent research involves subjects like the impact of Brexit on the attractiveness of FDI in both the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, with its consequent employment effect, as well as the specific effect of the uncertainty caused by the Brexit referendum. He also collaborated in a study on the performance of Irish indigenous firms versus foreign-owned firms, focusing on how financial constraints affect Irish firms’ export engagement. More recently, he investigated the role of the European Single Market as a source of competitiveness and productivity for European firms and the determinants on firms' decisions to undertake innovation with environmental benefits. His latest contribution at ESRI, as part of the Energy team, was to research on how public attitudes of Irish households affect the development of a cost-optimal electricity generation infrastructure in the island of Ireland.