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Welcome! I am a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley.
My main research interests are in international macroeconomics with a focus on emerging economies.
Before starting my Ph.D., I worked for two years as a research assistant at Banco Central de Costa Rica. I hold two bachelor's degrees from Universidad de Costa Rica: one in Economics, obtained in 2020, and the other in Actuarial Science, obtained in 2017.
Contact: alfredo_mendoza@berkeley.edu
WORKING PAPERS
The Emerging Market Great Moderation (Download PDF)
Co-author: Timothy Meyer
Abstract: We document a Great Moderation in emerging markets, characterized by a dramatic fall in aggregate macroeconomic volatility of about 40%, but no changes in other distinctive characteristics of emerging market business cycles. We show that this behavior is consistent with canonical emerging market business cycle theories that attribute this behavior to fluctuations in the growth trend. Using a novel methodology, we find that the contribution of trend fluctuations to output variance is substantial, and consistent with these theories, has not diminished. Additionally, we show that the moderation stems from a reduction in country-specific volatility and resulted in a welfare gain of 1% for the median emerging economy.
PUBLICATIONS
Pre-Ph.D. work
"Microdata Evidence of Incomplete Monetary Policy Transmission in a Non-Competitive Banking Sector: The Case of Costa Rica" (with José Pablo Barquero and Kerry Loaiza), Banco Central de Costa Rica working paper 04-2021, April 2021
"Demographic Modeling Via 3-Dimensional Markov Chains" (with Juan José Víquez-Rodríguez, Alexander Campos-Méndez, Jorge Loría-Solorzano, and Jorge Víquez-Bolaños), Revista de Matemática, Teoría y Aplicaciones, July 2018.
TEACHING
UC Berkeley
ECON 165: Money and Banking (Fall 2024, taught by John Nelson-Mondragon): This course explores money, financial institutions, financial markets, central banking, the real economy, and the interactions between these topics.
ECON 191: Economic Research for Undergraduates (Fall 2022 and Spring 2023; taught by Benjamin Schoefer and Ben Handel, respectively): This class provides a structure for students to write an original research paper in Economics, while exposing them to frontier research by professors of the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley.
ECON 134: Macroeconomic Policy from the Great Depression to Today (Spring 2022, taught by Yuriy Gorodnichenko): This course analyzes current macroeconomic challenges and policy responses in the United States and other countries through the lens of modern macroecono-mics and economic history. It includes an in-depth look at key macroeconomic policy issues, such as the impact of monetary and fiscal policy, and the causes and effects of financial crises.
ECON 181: International Trade (Fall 2021, taught by Thibault Fally): This course introduces students to core concepts in International Trade (e.g., comparative advantage, tariffs, iceberg costs, etc).
Universidad de Costa Rica
CA 304: Fundamentals of Risk and Insurance (Fall 2019, instructor): This class introduces the student to the fundamentals of risk from a microeconomic perspective. Statistical techniques to estimate the distribution of aggregate risks in insurance are covered in-depth.
CA 201: Mathematical Theory of Interest Rates (Fall 2018, instructor): This class covers the fundamentals of actuarial pricing of credit and financial instruments: discounted cash flows, valuation of projects, loans, no arbitrage, and yield curve estimation.
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