On Oct 19, the 2nd edition of the Jeronimas Stroinovskis Lectures took place at Vilnius University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration. The Stroinovskis Lectures have twin aims: first, to present and elucidate research developments in Economics to a broad audience, while simultaneously educating and inspiring students to study Economics in all its facets.
During the event, Professor Julien Martin gave a lecture on "Large Firms in the Global Economy." Mr. Martin is a full professor at the ESG-UQAM, holder of the UAQM research chair on the local impact of global firms, and a research affiliate at CEPR, CREST, and CIRANO. His research exploits firm-level data to examine various topics including international economics, corporate taxation, and urban economics. Previously Mr. Martin was a postdoc at Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He completed his Ph.D. in Economics at the Paris School of Economics. During the course of his study, he also visited Columbia University.
During his lecture, Mr. Martin discussed key patterns of the local footprint of large multinational firms and its impact on the domestic economy when exposed to foreign economic turbulences. He showed that when there are a few sufficiently large international companies in the economy, idiosyncratic shocks to these firms can have a big impact on the entire economy. In addition, Mr. Martin also demonstrated that these largest international corporations are often associated with transfer pricing behavior, which enabled them to transfer their profits toward tax havens. Such behavior not only reduces the government’s tax revenue but also jeopardizes fair competition in the market.
As Lithuania is deeply integrated into the global trade network, these topics and thus research insights remain relevant for Lithuania and many countries in our region as well.
The Jeronimas Stroinovskis Lectures was established by the Bank of Lithuania in memory of Jeronimas Stroinovskis, rector of Vilnius University, from 1799 to 1806. He is the pioneer of political economy, a science that was then just emerging in the world. The establishment of these lectures institutionalized the practice of inviting a distinguished economist, generally from outside Lithuania, to give guest lectures during the school year.