Juan S. Holguin
I am an economist specializing in industrial organization, macroeconomics and economic policy. I am currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at Western University.
My research examines how market structure shapes firms’ responses to economic policies and influences their broader effects.
Research
Working Papers & Work in Progress
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Industrial Policy and Jobs: The Role of Production Networks and Labor–Materials Substitution
Job Market Paper
Abstract
I study how pro-competition industrial policies affect labor demand. Importantly, I distinguish between direct effects on targeted sectors, where prices and markups decline, and indirect effects that propagate through both input-output linkages and heterogeneous labor-material substitution elasticities. Input-output linkages determine where price reductions propagate, while the elasticity of substitution between labor and materials governs firms’ labor response to lower material prices. Labor demand is amplified when labor and materials are complements and reduced when substitutes. I quantify these channels in the context of a major pro-competition policy in India, which lifted entry restrictions in about 500 product-markets. I estimate a network model with oligopolistic competition, variable markups, and sectoral-level labor-materials elasticity of substitution. The labor-materials elasticity-of-substitution channel explains over one quarter of the aggregate labor gains from deregulation, more than the standard markup-compression channel. For every 100 jobs created in deregulated sectors, 53 survive and 47 are destroyed through reallocation. Without the labor–materials substitution channel, 60 would have been destroyed. Crucially, heterogeneity in labor-materials elasticity of substitution matters for sectoral policy evaluation: for every 100 jobs created in deregulated sectors, a common-elasticity model assigns about 25 to the wrong sectors. The key policy takeaway is that employment effects depend on which sectors buy the goods the reform makes cheaper. Counterfactual exercises show that reforms generating similar output gains differ substantially in job gains or losses depending on how they are targeted.
- Markup Accounting
- Efficiency Effects of Tax Reform in India and the Interaction with Vertical Integration Decisions
- When Are Innovation Support Programs Effective? Examples from Chile and Colombia
Pre-PhD Publications
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The credit supply channel of monetary policy: evidence from a FAVAR model with sign restrictions
Empirical Economics, 2020
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Reduction of chronic malnutrition for infants in Bogotá, Colombia
BMC Public Health, 2021