Ivan Petkov, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Economics, Northeastern University | Faculty Affiliate, Global Resilience Institute
Boston, MA, UNITED STATES
Ivan Petkov received his Ph.D. in economics from Boston College in 2016.
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Biography
Ivan Petkov received his Ph.D. in economics from Boston College in 2016. His research interests focus on macroeconomics, finance, monetary economics, banking, and economic growth. In his dissertation he studied whether the allocation of bank credit to small businesses at distinct branches responds to liquidity increases or rise in asset prices. In a separate stream of research he also examined whether differences in cultural and institutional endowments of ancestries in U.S. counties affect economic performance. He has also studied the process of cultural assimilation of immigrants in the U.S.
Areas of Expertise (4)
Finance
Macroeconomics and Economic Growth
Governance and Incentives
Cultural Assimilation of Immigrants in the US
Education (3)
Boston College: Ph.D., Economics 2016
Saint Peter’s University: B.A. 2008
University of Massachusetts, Amherst: M.A., Economics 2011
Links (3)
Articles (5)
How Climate Change Can Affect Where People Live? Evidence from Flood Surprises
SSRN
Ivan Petkov
2018 This paper examines the extent to which flood-risk revisions, on their own, can affect the size of the community and real estate values over time. I compile a new measure of insured and uninsured losses for 4,147 communities and identify relatively small flood events that occur in places with different flood history. I show that flood history determines the extent to which events are anticipated and covered by insurance. Only locations with flood surprises experience declines in population. These occur in attractive communities with high pre-flood growth where real estate prices do not compensate for higher flood risk. Flood surprises in communities where housing prices decrease and compensate for higher risk have stable population.
Does It Matter Where You Came From? Ancestry Composition and Economic Performance of U.S. Counties, 1850-2010
Boston College Working Papers in Economics
Scott Fulford, Ivan Petkov, Fabio Schiantarelli
2017 The United States provides a unique laboratory for understanding how the cultural, institutional, and human capital endowments of immigrant groups shape economic outcomes. In this paper, we use census micro-sample information to reconstruct the country-of-ancestry distribution for US counties from 1850 to 2010. We also develop a county-level measure of GDP per capita over the same period. Using this novel panel data set, we investigate whether changes in the ancestry composition of a county matter for local economic development and the channels through which the cultural, institutional, and educational legacy of the country of origin affects economic outcomes in the US. Our results show that the evolution of the country-of-origin composition of a county matters. Moreover, the culture, institutions, and human capital that the immigrant groups brought with them and pass on to their children are positively associated with local development in the US. Among these factors, measures of culture that capture attitudes towards cooperation play the most important and robust role. Finally, our results suggest that while fractionalization of ancestry groups is positively related with county GDP, fractionalization in attributes such as trust is negatively related to local economic performance.
Small Business Lending and the Bank Branch Network
SSRN
Ivan Petkov
2017 In this paper, I examine the role of banks in propagating local economic shocks from one area to another through their network of bank branches, by exploiting a newly developed branch-level dataset. Specifically, I examine the change in the geographical distribution of small business loans within each bank network in response to: 1) increases in deposit growth due to presence in areas with new fracking wells; 2) changes in the profitability of real estate loans due to presence in areas experiencing real estate booms. I evaluate how the supply-driven changes in lending following these shocks impact real economic activity. I find that banks export the increase in liquidity from the fracking areas and fund more small business loans at other, more distant branches. Borrowers from banks with a higher exposure to fracking experience faster establishment growth at areas beyond 100 miles from the fracking activity. The results for the real estate booms show that increases in the return of real estate loans contributed to a decrease in small business lending at branches away these booms. Borrowers from banks with high exposure to residential appreciation experienced slower establishment growth even within areas at a significant distance from the real estate booms.
Does It Matter Where You Came From? Ancestry Composition and Economic Performance of U.S. Counties, 1850-2010
SSRN
Scott Fulford, Ivan Petkov, Fabio Schiantarelli
2017 The United States provides a unique laboratory for understanding how the cultural, institutional, and human capital endowments of immigrant groups shape economic outcomes. In this paper, we use census micro-samples to reconstruct the country-of-ancestry composition of the population of U.S. counties from 1850 to 2010 and describe its evolution. We also develop a county-level measure of GDP per worker over the same period. Using this novel panel data set, we show that the evolution of a county’s ancestry composition is significantly associated with changes in county-level GDP. The cultural, institutional, and human capital endowments from the country of origin drive this relationship. We also use an instrumental variable strategy to identify the effect of endowments on local economic development. Finally, our results suggest that while ancestry diversity is positively related to county GDP, diversity in attributes is negatively related to county GDP. We show that part of this relationship is explained by the close link between occupational variety and ancestry diversity.
Culture: Persistence and Evolution
NBER Working Paper
Francesco Giavazzi, Ivan Petkov, Fabio Schiantarelli
2016 This paper documents the speed of evolution (or lack thereof) of a range of values and beliefs of different generations of US immigrants, and interprets the evidence in the light of a model of socialization and identity choice. Convergence to the norm differs greatly across cultural attitudes. Moreover, results obtained studying higher generation immigrants differ from those found when the analysis is limited to the second generation and imply a lesser degree of persistence than previously thought. Persistence is also culture specific, in the sense that the country of origin of one's ancestors matters for the pattern of generational convergence.
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