Current Working Papers
Current Working Papers
We study the determinants of US dollar demand across market participants and traded instruments using survey-based exchange rate and macroeconomic expectations. Leveraging granular FX trading data and forward looking expectations, we present three results. First, currency investors increase their dollar holdings when expecting US dollar appreciation or improved US macroeconomic fundamentals, whereas synthetic dollar funding is driven by forecasted CIP deviations. Second, cross-sectionally, investors rebalance along the factor structure of currency risk into dollars following an expected dollar appreciation. Third, responses to professional forecasts weaken when uncertainty or forecaster disagreement rises, and are lower for forecasters with poorer past accuracy. Our findings demonstrate that long-horizon expectations accurately predict dollar demand across spot, swap, and forward currency markets. We rationalize those finding in a theoretical model of currency demand.
Presentations: Northeastern University, IMF, Boston College (Macro), Duisburg-Essen (Mercator), ifo Dresden Workshop on Macroeconomics and International Finance, Women in Macro Workshop at Central Bank of Ireland, 2026 Annual IFS Conference, Fifth Conference on the International Roles of the U.S. Dollar, IBEFA Summer Meeting, 8th International Conference on European Economics and Politics, Aarhus Finance Forum (scheduled), 2026 Finance Research Revolution Conference (scheduled), 2026 Symposium on Foreign Exchange Markets (scheduled), Annual Meeting of the German Finance Association (scheduled), and 13th SAFE Asset Pricing Workshop (scheduled).
The higher aggregate prevalence of loan over bond funding in Europe is not only driven by the well-documented differences in financial market settings but also strongly shaped by different firm characteristics. The European economy is more fragmented than the U.S. economy, and thus features a different firm distribution in terms of size and collateral availability. I estimate that if all European firms had access to a financial market like the U.S. market, their aggregate bond funding share would remain significantly smaller. This counterfactual suggests a limited potential for European corporate bond markets in the short and medium term.
Past Presentations: 1st CEPR Frankfurt Hub Conference on EURO at 25 and beyond, AEA Annual Meeting 2023 (poster session), World Finance Conference, FMA Conference, RCEA Conference, 29th Finance Forum
Publications
Money Market Disconnect (with A. Ranaldo and B. Ballensiefen)
Review of Financial Studies, Volume 36, Issue 10, October 2023, Pages 4158–4189 (open access)
A repurchase agreement (repo) is a source of funding and collateral. We document that the money market is more segmented when the collateral motive prevails. Two crucial aspects of the central bank framework lead to this disconnect: banks’ access to the central bank's deposit facility and assets’ eligibility for Quantitative Easing (QE). We show that repo rates lent by banks with access to the deposit facility and secured by QE eligible assets are more collateral-driven and disconnected from funding-based money market rates. Our results are relevant for different monetary policies and have suggestive implications for the monetary policy pass-through.
Past Presentations: AEA Annual Meeting 2021, ECB-RFS Macro-Finance Conference, Annual Congress of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, University of St.Gallen PhD Seminar, SFI Research Days, World Finance Conference, Annual Conference of the Money, Macro, Finance Society, SNB Research Conference, 16th Central Bank Conference on the Microstructure of Financial Markets, ECB Money Market Conference 2022 (presentation video).
Monetary Union, Asymmetric Recession, and Exit (with C. Keuschnigg, L. Kirschner and M. Kogler)
Review of International Economics, Volume 31, Issue 5, November 2023, Pages 1833–1863 (open access)
We propose a model of the Eurozone and analyze an asymmetric recession in a vulnerable member state characterized by a trilemma of high public debt, weak banks, and deteriorating competitiveness. We compare macroeconomic adjustment under continued membership with two exit scenarios that introduce flexible exchange rates and autonomous monetary policy. An exit with stable investor expectations could significantly dampen the short-run impact. Stabilization is achieved by a targeted monetary expansion combined with depreciation. However, investor panic may lead to escalation, aggravate the recession and delay the recovery.