Staff working papers
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Global Demand and Supply Sentiment: Evidence from Earnings Calls
This paper quantifies global demand, supply and uncertainty shocks and compares two major global recessions: the 2008–09 Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. We use two alternate approaches to decompose economic shocks: text mining techniques on earnings calls transcripts and a structural Bayesian vector autoregression model. -
What People Believe About Monetary Finance and What We Can(’t) Do About It: Evidence from a Large-Scale, Multi-Country Survey Experiment
We conduct a large-scale survey to shed light on what people believe about public finance. An experiment demonstrates that central bank communication can persistently shift views on monetary financing. It further suggests that views on monetary financing impact support for fiscal discipline. -
Monetary Policy Transmission, Bank Market Power, and Wholesale Funding Reliance
I study how banking market concentration and reliance on wholesale funding affect monetary policy transmission to mortgage rates. I find that this transmission is imperfect and dampens the response of consumption, output, and housing prices. -
Unpacking Moving: A Quantitative Spatial Equilibrium Model with Wealth
We propose a model to understand low observed migration rates by considering the interaction between location and wealth decisions. We look at different policies and find that temporary moving vouchers only slightly increase welfare, while lower housing regulations can decrease the welfare gap by lowering house prices nationwide. -
Privacy-Preserving Post-Quantum Credentials for Digital Payments
Digital payments and decentralized systems enable the creation of new financial products and services for users. One core challenge in digital payments is the need to protect users from fraud and abuse while retaining privacy in individual transactions. We propose a pseudonymous credential scheme for use in payment systems to tackle this problem. -
SME Failures Under Large Liquidity Shocks: An Application to the COVID-19 Crisis
We study the effects of financial frictions on firm exit when firms face large liquidity shocks. We develop a simple model of firm cost-minimization that introduces a financial friction that limits firms’ borrowing capacity to smooth temporary shocks to liquidity. -
The Macroeconomic Effects of Portfolio Equity Inflows
I provide evidence that portfolio equity inflows can have expansionary effects on GDP and inflation if not offset by monetary policy. I use a shift-share instrument to estimate equity inflows based on plausibly exogenous timing of inflows into mutual funds with heterogeneous country portfolios. -
Understanding Inflation Dynamics: The Role of Government Expenditures
We study the impact government expenditure has on inflation. We find that changes in government expenditure account for a substantial portion of inflation variations. We also find that inflation and inflation expectations respond negatively to fiscal spending shocks, reaffirming the supply-side channel through which inflation responds to fiscal expansions. -
Time Use and Macroeconomic Uncertainty
We estimate the effects of economic uncertainty on time use and discuss its macroeconomic implications. We develop a model to demonstrate that substitution between market and non-market work provides an additional insurance margin to households, weakening precautionary savings and labour supply and lowering aggregate demand, ultimately amplifying the contractionary effects of uncertainty.