Thank you for visiting! I’m an economist and data scientist working at the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). I received my Ph.D. in 2024 from the Department of Economics at the University of Bern. From September 2023 to March 2024, I had the privilege of being a visiting researcher at the Wharton School at UPenn. In my research, I focus on public and health economics.
Publications
The Apple Does Not Fall Far From the Tree: Intergenerational Persistence of Dietary Habits (2026)
Accepted at The Review of Economics and Statistics, with Martina Pons [ Paper | Online Appendix ]
This paper provides novel evidence on how dietary habits – a key health behavior – are transmitted across generations, exploiting unique grocery transaction data linked with administrative records. We document strong intergenerational persistence in dietary habits, exceeding that of income, and consider several channels that might explain this pattern. Specifically, we find that socioeconomic status and geography account for only a small share of the transmission. Combined with the absence of a dietary response following a parent’s unexpected lifestyle-related death, these findings underscore the importance of early-life influences and habit formation.
Who Shops Online? The Role of Policy, Household Characteristics, and Family Networks (2026)
Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 162 (1), with Maximilian von Ehrlich [ Abstract | Journal Link ]
This paper examines the unintended effects of public policy measures and social dynamics on e-commerce adoption, using a comprehensive dataset of household level transactions at Switzerland’s largest retailer matched to administrative registers. First, we study how the COVID-19 pandemic and temporary policy measures impacted the adoption of online grocery shopping in Switzerland, and we document a substantial increase in online expenditures. This shift is heterogeneous, with younger, larger, and richer households, as well as those with limited local store access, being particularly responsive. Moreover, we find that stricter mitigation policies intensify online usage. Second, we examine the role of social networks in accelerating the diffusion of e-commerce. We highlight strong peer effects: within multi-generational families and among neighbors, the adoption of online shopping by one household significantly raises the likelihood of adoption by others. These findings reveal the impact of policy measures and the importance of social networks in shaping digital consumption behavior.
Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 161 (9) [ Abstract | Journal Link ]
Cross-border shopping expands product variety and lowers prices for consumers in high-price countries, but it diminishes domestic tax revenues, reduces sales, and shifts demand away from local retailers. Exploiting Switzerland’s COVID-19-induced border closure as a natural experiment, I investigate the socioeconomic implications of cross-border shopping. Linking detailed grocery transaction records for 710,000 households to administrative data, I find that the border closure raises domestic grocery expenditures in border areas by an additional 10.4%. The benefits of cross-border shopping, however, are heterogeneous, and larger and lower-income households exhibit a particularly strong propensity to shop abroad. Based on these patterns, I estimate an annual loss of 1.5 billion Swiss francs in domestic grocery sales, equivalent to 3.8% of the total market.
Working Papers
Country-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains
[ Abstract | Download ] with Lukas Hauck (Revise & Resubmit)
We study the country-wide effects of new residential housing supply using population-wide register data for Switzerland. New housing units attract predominantly high-income households but the triggered moving chains also enable lower-income households to move as affordable units get vacated. We expand existing evidence on moving chains in two new directions. First, we document that moving chain income gradients remain remarkably similar whether the new unit is located in municipalities with high or low vacancy rates, strict or lenient land-use regulations, and elastic or inelastic housing supply, though initial mover incomes vary across these market conditions. Second, alternative triggers—emigration, household consolidation, and deaths—account for the majority of initial vacancies and generate moving chains starting with substantially lower-income households. These findings demonstrate that housing supply expansions benefit lower-income households through moving chains.
The urban-rural gap in local market access: Evidence from grocery demand
[ Abstract | Download ] with Maximilian von Ehrlich and Tobias Seidel (Submitted)
This paper leverages quasi-experimental variation from store openings and 1.5 billion grocery transactions to causally estimate the distance elasticity of grocery expenditures (-1.47) and the spatial extent of local consumption areas (approximately 16 minutes of car travel time). We embed these estimates in a nested CES demand framework to construct a granular index of local market access for nearly 350,000 grid cells (100x100m) across Switzerland. Urban areas enjoy nearly twice the consumption access of rural areas, with the 90th-to-10th percentile ratio nationally exceeding four. Compensating variation calculations show that low-income and elderly households would benefit disproportionately from improved local market access. Finally, we document that market access varies predominantly between locations, whereas income differs mostly within locations—the two dimensions are nearly orthogonal. This suggests that place-based retail policies and income-based transfers address fundamentally different dimensions of spatial inequality and should be regarded as complements.
Other Writing
Food for Thought - Consumer Mobility and Nutritional Choices (Thesis)
[ Abstract | Link ]
This thesis includes three papers investigating different dimensions of consumer behavior in Switzerland within the fields of urban and health economics: eating patterns within families across generations, consumer mobility and grocery market access within cities, and shopping trips across national borders. Chapter One, titled The Apple Does Not Fall Far From the Tree: Intergenerational Persistence of Dietary Habits, studies the intergenerational persistence of healthy eating patterns. Chapter Two, titled Cross-Border Shopping: Evidence from Household Transaction Records, analyzes the consumers’ response to the COVID-19-induced national border closure in Switzerland. Chapter Three, titled Spatial Frictions in Retail Consumption, exploits supermarket openings to estimate distance decay functions and incorporates them into a simple framework of spatial shopping. Addressing these topics contributes to (i) the design of effective public health interventions and (ii) land-use restrictions and urban planning that account for the complexities of spatial consumer behavior.
Arbeit und Kapital in Zeiten der Wissensgesellschaft (in German)
[ Link ] with Guido Baldi
Firmenersparnisse und der Arbeitsanteil am Einkommen (in German)
[ Link ] with Guido Baldi
