Publications and forthcoming papers
Asymmetric Group Loan Contracts: Experimental Evidence (with Burak Uras, Sigrid Suetens, and Philine Visser), Accepted at the Journal of the Economic Science Association
The Role of Risky Debt and Safe Assets in Unregulated Financial Intermediaries with Costly State Verification (with Pedro Gomis-Porqueras), Economic Theory 80, 203–239 (2025).
E-Money, Risk Sharing, and Welfare (with Burak Uras), European Economic Review, Volume 169 (2024), 104832.
Imperfect Competition in the Banking Sector and Macroeconomic Instability (with Leonor Modesto and Teresa Loyd-Braga), Journal of Mathematical Economics 112 (2024),102968.
Sovereign default, fiscal policy, and macroeconomic instability (with Leonor Modesto), Journal of Public Economic Theory, 24 (2022), 1386-1412.
Transparency and Collateral: Central versus bilateral clearing (with Gaetano Antinolfi and Francesca Carapella), Theoretical Economics, 17 (2022), 185-217.
Real consequences of open market operations: The role of limited commitment (with Pedro Gomis-Porqueras), European Economic Review, Volume 132 (2021).
Endogenous Credit and Investment Cycles with Asset Price Volatility (with Leonor Modesto), Macroeconomic Dynamics, 22.7 (2018): 1859-1874.
Joint Liability with Endogenously Asymmetric Group Loan Contracts (with Burak Uras), Journal of Development Economics, Volume 127 (2017), pp.72-90
Costly Monitoring, Dynamic Incentives, and Default (with Gaetano Antinolfi), Journal of Economic Theory, Volume 159, Part A (2015), pp. 105-119
Working Papers
A key limitation of traditional joint liability loans lies in their symmetric structure, which can undermine peer monitoring and generate coordinated defaults. We propose that a contractual innovation in the form of asymmetry by designating one group member as an incentivized lead borrower can enhance peer monitoring and mitigate moral hazard. We develop structural models of group lending with ex-ante and ex-post moral hazard (investment diligence and strategic default) and evaluate both frameworks through a lab-in-the-field experiment with microfinance clients in urban Bolivia. Our experimental results show that asymmetric contracts significantly increase peer monitoring by 17–20% in both moral hazard scenarios.
Selected Work in Progress
Social Norms and Excess of Transfer Progressivity in the Village (with Albert Rodriguez Sala and Raul Santaeulalia-Llopis)
Optimal Monetary Policy Under Incomplete Financial Markets when Money is Essential, (with Gaetano Antinolfi and Enrique Kawamura)