Ararat Gocmen



Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Economics
University College London
ararat.gocmen.19@ucl.ac.uk
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Hello! I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at University College London.

I study labor and financial economics, specializing in migration economics and entrepreneurial finance. I am especially interested in how labor and capital markets interact with each other and the implications for inequality.

At UCL, I serve as a Research Officer at the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration and a PhD Scholar at the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Centre on Wealth Concentration, Inequality, and the Economy.

I hold an AB in History from Princeton University and, as a Marshall Scholar, earned an MSc in Economics from UCL and an MA in Intellectual History and Political Thought jointly from QMUL and UCL. Previously, I worked in BlackRock's Portfolio Analytics Group in New York.

Working Papers

Private Capital Markets and Inequality
with Clara Martínez-Toledano (Imperial) and Vrinda Mittal (UNC-Chapel Hill)
Draft

This paper examines how expanding private capital markets contribute to rising economic inequalities in the U.S. We show that the share of early-stage financing raised from U.S. high-net-worth individuals tripled from 2004 to 2022. Exploiting the expansion of the QSBS tax exclusion, we find that HNWIs’ investments made startups 5.6% more likely to stay private. Counterfactual simulations reveal that HNWIs’ excess returns on early-stage investments explain 26% of the growth in the top 0.5% wealth share over 2010-2022. Finally, investor entry increased incumbents’ returns and encouraged further investments, generating a self-reinforcing feedback loop between private capital market growth and inequality.

Works in Progress

Immigration and Firm Investment

Immigration and Labor Market Tightness
with Thomas Cornelissen (Essex), Christian Dustmann (UCL), and Uta Schönberg (HKU)