Russell TN Wong
Research advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. CV
Email: purpleteeth(plus)JET(at)gmail(dot)com
Research
Theme: I am a macroeconomist and design search models to study frontier risks (e.g. crypto, AI, social media, geopolitics, climate, financial disintermediation, etc) and their policy implications, Why search models? Ask me in person!
Geopolitics and the Payment Demand for Reserve: Theory and Evidence from China, with Mengbo Zhang (SUFE)
Status: next present at SED, Fed BoG, BoC, Richmond Fed, Money Workshop Gerzensee
Bank Concentration and Reserve Concentration, with Mengbo Zhang (SUFE)
Status: revising for resubmission
Eggs in One Basket: Security and Convenience of Digital Currencies, with Charlie Kahn (UIUC) and Francisco Rivadeneyra (BoC)
Status: revising for resubmission
Limited Liability and Disaster Underinsurance, with Laura Bakkensen (Oregon), John Jones (FRB Richmond) and Toan Phan (FRB Richmond)
Status: last present at AERE, YEEHAW, UH and etc
Social Network Addiction, with Tommy Leung (WFU) and Koleman Strumpf (WFU)
Status: last present at Toulouse, VCU, UCI, Clemson, IIOC, SEA, SHESG and etc
Fertility Decline and Housing Boom under Geopolitical Tension: Theory and Evidence, with Terry Cheung (Sinica) and Chun-Che Chi (Sinica)
Status: next present Richmond Macro Workshop; last present at AEA
Artificial Intelligence and Technological Unemployment, with Ping Wang (WashU)
Status: Journal of Monetary Economics, 2026, Richmond Fed WP version (updated) and NBER WP version (outdated)
Leveraging the Disagreement on Climate Change: Theory and Evidence, with Laura Bakkensen (Oregon) and Toan Phan (FRB Richmond)
Status: Journal of Political Economy, 2025
Curse of Counterfeiting with Po-Hsuan Lin (UVA)
Status: preparing experiments
Decentralized Mass Movement and Tullock's Paradox: Theory and Evidence from Hong Kong with Pui-Hang Wong (Maastricht)
Status: last present at APSA and AEA
Disintermediating the Interbank Market, with Mengbo Zhang (SUFE)
Status: last present at AEA, SEA, Board of Governors, Richmond Fed, Bank of Canada
Severance Pay in an Optimal Contract, with Borys Grochulski (FRB Richmond) and Yuzhe Zhang (TAMU)
Status: American Economic Journal: Micro, 2025
Lending Relationships and Optimal Monetary Policy, with Zach Bethune (UVA), Guillaume Rocheteau (UC Irvine) and Cathy Zhang (Purdue)
Status: Review of Economic Studies, 2022; online appendix and Stata data
Payments on Digital Platforms: Resilience, Interoperability and Welfare, with Jonathan Chiu (Bank of Canada)
Status: Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 2022
An Heterogeneous New Monetarist Model with an Application to Unemployment, with Guillaume Rocheteau (UC Irvine) and Pierre-Olivier Weill (UCLA)
Status: Journal of Monetary Economics, 2021 and NBER WP
Should the Central Bank Issue E-money, with Charlie Kahn (UIUC) and Francisco Rivadeneyra (BoC).
Status: Journal of Financial Market Infrastructures, 2019
A Tractable Model of Monetary Exchange with Ex-post Heterogeneity, with Guillaume Rocheteau (UC Irvine) and Pierre-Olivier Weill (UCLA)
Status: Theoretical Economics, 2018 and NBER WP version, slide, math appendix, numerical appendix
Estimation and Inference of Threshold Regression Models with Measurement Errors, with Terrence Chong (CUHK), Haiqiang Chen (WISE) and Isabel Yan (CityUHK)
Status: Studies of Nonlinear Dynamics and Economics, 2018
Monetary Exchange and the Irreducible Cost of Inflation
Status: Journal of Economic Theory, 2016
A Tractable Monetary Model under General Preference
Status: Review of Economic Studies, 2016, slides, online appendix and data
Indeterminacy and the Elasticity of Substitution in One-sector Models, with CK Yip (CUHK)
Status: Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 2012
Policy Writing
How large is the rounding tax of phasing out pennies?
Can China Avoid a Liquidity Trap?
Crypto Conglomerate: Economics and Regulations
Federal Reserve as The Borrower of Last Resort
Why Stablecoins Fail: An Economist’s Post-Mortem on Terra
A Historical Perspective on Digital Currencies
SWIFT, Sanctions and Dollar's Dominance
Should the Fed Issue Digital Currency? Some Considerations
Monetary Policy and Small Business
Institutional Barriers and World Income Disparities
Teaching
A reading list of recent works on innovation and endogenous growth
ECON820 Money in the Macroeconomy, for grad 2015, Queen's University
ECON1011 Introduction to Microeconomics, for undergrad 2011, Washington University in St Louis
Dormant or subsumed papers
Contingent Debt and Performance Pricing in an Optimal Capital Structure Model with Financial Distress and Reorganization, with Borys Grochulski (FRB Richmond)
Status: FRB Richmond working paper
Self-Insurance and the Risk-Sharing Role of Money, 2018
Status: Richmond Fed Economic Quarterly
Working Through Distribution: Money in the Short and Long Run, revised 2018, with Guillaume Rocheteau (UC Irvine) and Pierre-Olivier Weill (UCLA)
Status: expanded into "A Heterogeneous New Monetarist Model with an Application to Unemployment" and NBER WP
On the Essentiality of E-money, 2017 revised, with Jonathan Chiu (Bank of Canada)
Status: BoC WP
E-Money: Efficiency, Stability and Optimal Policies, 2013, with Jonathan Chiu (Bank of Canada)
Status: BoC WP
Current Activities
Guest Editor of Journal of Economic Theory, Special Issue of Models of Decentralized Markets (with Ricardo Lagos, Guido Menzio, and Guillaume Rocheteau)
Associate Editor of Economic Modelling
Associate Editor of 經濟研究
Education
Ph.D. in Economics, 2012, (Washington U in St Louis)
B. Soc Sci and M. Phil in Economics, 2007 (Chinese U of Hong Kong)
