Joel Stiebale

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Joel Stiebale is an economist whose research sits at the intersection of industrial organization, technological change, and firm dynamics. His work investigates how emerging digital automation technologies reshape competitive landscapes, with a particular focus on the role of industrial robotics in driving market concentration across European industries. Stiebale's most prominent contributions examine the phenomenon of "superstar firms" — a small number of highly productive, high-markup enterprises that increasingly dominate their industries. By combining robot adoption data with detailed firm-level balance sheet information across six European countries, his research provides rigorous empirical evidence on how automation amplifies disparities in sales, productivity, markups, and profitability within industries. This work speaks directly to pressing policy debates around market power, inequality, and the distributional consequences of technological progress. His research has attracted notable early attention, with his work on robots and superstar firms accumulating over 50 citations since its 2024 publication — a strong indication of its relevance to both academic and policy audiences. For students and researchers interested in the economics of automation, market structure, or European industrial dynamics, Stiebale's scholarship offers a rigorous and timely empirical lens on how technology is fundamentally restructuring modern economies.