
Luca Mecca

I am a PhD candidate in Finance at London Business School, with research interests in asset pricing and macrofinance.
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Prior to joining LBS, I worked as a data scientist at the European Central Bank. I hold a B.S. and M.S. in Finance from Bocconi University.
Working Papers
With Roberto Gomez-Cram, Yunhan Guo, and Howard Kung
Government spending is large, persistent, and disproportionately allocated to a select number of firms within industries through federal procurement contracts. To identify the effects on firm outcomes, we construct government spending shocks at the firm level as the difference between realized and expected contract awards. We measure expectations by tracing the allocation of each dollar to firms back to appropriations bills and exploiting predictable agency-to-firm procurement shares. Firms receiving positive government spending shocks increase markups and profitability, outperform industry peers in the stock market, and gain market share, fostering rising industry stars.