ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Plant and animal organs display a remarkable diversity of shapes. A major challenge in developmental and evolutionary biology is to understand how this diversity of forms is generated. Recent advances in imaging, computational modelling and genomics now make it possible to address this challenge effectively for the first time. Leaf development is a particularly tractable system because of its accessibility to imaging and preservation of connectivity during growth. Leaves also display remarkable diversity in shape and form, with perhaps the most complex form being the pitcher-shaped (epiascidiate) leaves of carnivorous plants. This form has evolved four times independently, raising the question of whether its seeming complexity may have arisen through simple modulations in underlying morphogenetic mechanisms. To test this hypothesis, I aim to develop a model system for carnivorous plants based on Utricularia gibba (humped bladderwort), which has the advantage of having one of the smallest genomes known in plants (~2/3 the size of the Arabidopsis genome) and small transparent pitcher-shaped leaves amenable to imaging. I will use this system to define the morphogenetic events underlying the formation of pitcher-shaped leaves and their molecular genetic control. I will also develop and apply computational modelling to explore hypotheses that may account for the development of U. gibba bladders and further test these hypotheses experimentally. In addition, I will investigate the relationship between U. gibba bladder development and species with simpler leaf shapes, such as Arabidopsis, or species where the epiascidiate form has evolved independently. Taken together, these studies should show how developmental rules elucidated in current model systems might be extended and built upon to account for the diversity and complexity of tissue forms, integrating evo-devo approaches with a mechanistic understanding of morphogenesis.

2 499 997 €

Start date: 2013-06-01, End date: 2018-05-31

The research proposed here is concerned with the dynamics of immigrant impacts and the process of economic adaptation in receiving societies. The immigration process is inherently dynamic: many new immigrants return home within a short time; and those that remain undergo a long term series of investments and behavioural changes that gradually alter the way that they interact with the economy of the receiving country. Moreover, in the longer run the presence of immigrants affects the choices of firms over new technology investments, and the choices of native workers over schooling and occupations. Thus simple static frameworks provide an incomplete and even potentially misleading perspective for understanding modern immigration patterns. The point of departure for this proposed research is the recognition that we need to reformulate the analysis of immigrant impacts in a fully dynamic framework, acknowledging the inter-temporal choices of immigrants, firms, and native workers and the ways that these three groups of agents interact over a longer horizon. Our approach involves treating immigration as a dynamic shock, where the dynamics relates to the different agents involved: immigrants, who change their position in the native skill distribution over time as a result of their life-cycle decisions; firms, who react by adjusting their technologies, product mix, and their involvement with institutions and regulatory environment; and native workers, who adjust by changing their career plans. Our work will combine highly innovative theoretical perspectives with state-of-the-art empirical analyses exploiting unique policy experiments and exceptional data sources, merging longitudinal administrative population data with data from firm and individual surveys. This agenda will enable us to construct a comprehensive picture of the adjustment process in response to immigration and open new horizons for future research on the impact of immigration in a dynamic framework.

1 129 428 €

Start date: 2013-06-01, End date: 2018-05-31

"My project consists of two lines of work. 1.Empirical Macro-Finance: Asset prices are informative about the macro-economic risks that matter to investors and about the welfare costs of economic fluctuations. However, recent empirical evidence suggests that leading asset pricing models cannot explain how risks are priced across maturities in equity markets, which is a key input to measuring the costs of business cycles. An analysis of what leading models miss will vastly improve our understanding of how the real economy and asset prices are related. Also, by expanding our empirical evidence about the term structure of equity to the firm-level, I plan to study how investment decisions relate to asset prices. My goal is to measure the firms' incentives to invest and how this impacts economic growth more broadly. 2.Financial Economics of Insurance Markets: Households in Europe and the US can choose from a wide variety of insurance products that insure health and mortality risks. Choosing between these products is no easy task and the costs from sub-optimal insurance choices are estimated to be large. My plan is to develop a comprehensive life-cycle theory of insurance choice that accounts for family structure, risk factors such as labor income and housing, and different institutional settings across countries. I also plan to study the supply side of insurance markets. The traditional view is that insurance prices are driven by life-cycle demand or informational frictions. However, as is clear from evidence during the financial crisis, insurance companies are in fact financial institutions. If financial constraints bind, it may affect insurance prices and ultimately consumers' welfare. My goal is to understand how financial frictions affect insurance companies. A policy implication of my research may be that the private supply of insurance is an imperfect substitute for public supply as insurance companies face different incentives and constraints than the government."

1 077 765 €

Start date: 2013-10-01, End date: 2018-09-30

"The financial crisis, since its start in 2008 has exposed enormous fractures both in the financial architecture and in the structure of the global economy. Although with some notable exceptions, the magnitude of the events caught the finance profession largely by surprise. Clearly, we have to understand better the institutional mechanism channeling savings towards the best uses of capital, and to what extent this mechanism can sometimes fail. The projects in this proposal will push the boundaries of our knowledge in this direction. I suggest a dual approach to achieve this goal. First, we have to improve our understanding of which frictions are the crucial impediments of the efficient functioning of markets. As this approach focuses on particular markets in isolation, I call this the micro approach. I propose three projects within this approach: trading and information diffusion in OTC markets, the crowdedness in limits-to-arbitrage, and the interaction of political uncertainty and sovereign bond prices. Second, from the frictions emerging from the micro approach, we have to select the ones which determine the aggregate liquidity fluctuations in the economy. I use this concept in a broad sense; referring to the changing efficiency with which the financial system allocates resources across investment opportunities. As this approach focuses on the functionality of the financial system as a whole, I call this the macro approach. I propose two projects within this approach. The first project focuses on the determinants of the differences in the financial architecture of different economies. It builds a novel framework to study the dynamics of the financial sector of an economy. The second project studies the role of shadow banking in the fluctuation of aggregate liquidity. In particular, this project concentrates on the fluctuation of the efficiency of private liquidity creation as the state of the economy changes."

1 122 883 €

Start date: 2013-12-01, End date: 2018-11-30