Research

Working Papers:

A Sufficient Statistics Approach for Macro Policy, Web Appendix, (with G. Mesters)
American Economic Review, Nov. 2023 (lead article)
Research question: Can we conduct macroeconomic policy without a structural model and yet be robust to the Lucas critique or dynamic time inconsistency? For a large class of macro models, we can, and the paper shows how to exploit two well-known statistics —forecasts and impulse responses— for policy evaluation and policy making.
A Menu of Insurance Contracts for the Unemployed, (with Y. Zylberberg)
Review of Economic Studies, Jan. 2022
Research question: We propose to let unemployed workers choose their preferred type of unemployment insurance: (i) receive periodic unemployment insurance payments or (ii) receive a one-time (larger) severance payment. This type of "menu" can be welfare improving in the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard.

Understanding the Size of the Government Spending Multiplier: It's in the Sign, Appendix, (with D. Debortoli and C. Matthes),
Review of Economic Studies, Jan. 2022
Research question: The government spending multiplier is asymmetric: a decrease in public spending has a mulitplier above 1, but an increase in public spending has a multiplier substantially below 1. A model with incomplete financial markets and downward nominal wage rigidities can rationalize this asymmetry.
Non-technical summary: Are the Effects of Fiscal Policy Asymmetric?

The Phillips multiplier, (with G. Mesters)
Journal of Monetary Economics, Jan. 2021
Research question: We introduce the Phillips multiplier as a statistic to non-parametrically characterize the inflation-unemployment trade-off and its dynamic nature.

Identifying Modern Macro equations with Old Shocks, Appendix, (with G. Mesters),
Quarterly Journal of Economics, Nov. 2020
Research question: We propose a new class of instrumental variables ---sequences of structural shocks proxies--- to identify structural macro equations like the Phillips curve, Euler equations or policy rules.

Are the Effects of Financial Market Disruptions Big or Small?, Appendix, (with C. Matthes and A. Ziegenbein),
Review of Economics and Statistics, Sept. 2020
Research question: A favorable financial shock —an easing of financial conditions— has little effect on output, but an adverse shock has large and persistent effects.

Impulse Response Estimation By Smooth Local Projections, (with C. Brownlees)
Review of Economics and Statistics, July 2019, (Code in R or Matlab)
Research question: Local Projections (LP) is a popular methodology for the estimation of Impulse Responses (IR), but the nonparametric nature of LP comes at an efficiency cost. We propose a method to increase estimation precision by imposing smoothness on the IRs.

Under-Employment and the Trickle-Down of Unemployment, Appendix, (with Y. Zylberberg)
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Apr 2019
Research question: A substantial fraction of workers are underemployed, i.e., employed in jobs for which they are overqualified, and that fraction—the under-employment rate—is higher in recessions. To explain this fact, we argue that some high-skill workers become underemployed in order to escape the competition for high-skill jobs and find a job more rapidly at the expense of less-skilled workers.
Featured in The Wall Street Journal

Functional Approximations of Impulse Responses (FAIR), Appendix, (with C. Matthes)
Journal of Monetary Economics, Nov. 2018, (Code)
Research question: We propose a new method (FAIR) to estimate impulse responses (IR). FAIR approximates IR with a few basis functions and directly estimates the moving average representation. Benefits: parsimony and efficiency, ability to summarize the IR, ease of prior elicitation, flexibility in allowing for non-linearities while preserving efficiency.
Non-technical summary: Are the Effects of Monetary Policy Asymmetric?

On the Demographic Adjustment of Unemployment, Appendix, (with G. Mesters)
Review of Economics and Statistics May 2018. Non-technical summary: How Tight Is the US Labor Market?
Research question: We propose a new demographic-adjustment procedure that uses a dynamic factor model for the worker flows to separate aggregate labor market forces and demographic-specific trends.

Declining Desire to Work and Downward Trends in Unemployment and Participation, (with A. Figura)
NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2015, Appendix.
Research question: We document a decline in the share of non-participants who report wanting to work, and we argue that that decline, which was particularly strong in the second half of the 90s, is a major aspect of the downward trends in unemployment and participation over the past 20 years.
Featured in VoxEU, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Fortune

Forecasting Unemployment Across Countries: the Ins and Outs, (with P. Garda)
European Economic Review, Special Issue on European Unemployment, 2016

Labor Market Heterogeneity and the Aggregate Matching Function, (with A. Figura)
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Oct 2015

The Ins and Outs of Forecasting Unemployment, (with C. Nekarda)
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall 2012.
Featured in The Wall Street Journal I & II, The New York Times I, II & III, Business Week, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, Old forecast and analysis of the US labor market available here

Which Industries are Shifting the Beveridge Curve?, (with M. Elsby, B. Hobijn and A. Sahin), Prepared for the JOLTS Symposium, December 2010, Washington D.C., Monthly Labor Review, June 2012.

Sources of Inflation in Sub-Saharan Africa (joint with Shanaka Peiris (IMF)), Journal of African Economies, 17(5), 2008.
(older version: IMF Working Paper, WP/07/32, 2007)