Work in Progress

• A DFM for level, volatility and skewness, with Haroon Mumtaz (QMUL), Ana Skoblar (ECB) and Sofia Velasco (Banco de España)

• Climate and macroeconomic volatility, with Fulvia Marotta (DNB and University of Oxford) and Marco Tibullo (QMUL)

*Presented at Macroeconomic Implications of Climate-Related Risks Challenges and Opportunities for the Low-Carbon Transition Workshop (2026), De Nederlandsche Bank (2025), the Deutsche Bundesbank (2025), the European Central Bank (2025), The Second International Conference on the Climate-Macro-Finance Interface (2025), IAAE (2025), University of Oxford (2025), Queen Mary University of London (2025), and Royal Economic Society PhD conference (2024)

• The heterogeneous cost of inflation uncertainty, with Gian Paulo Soave (University of São Paulo)

*Presented at the 9th Workshop of the Research Network of the Central Bank of Brazil 

Working Papers

• A Millennium of UK Business Cycles: Insights from Structural VAR Analysis, with Haroon Mumtaz and Gábor Pintér. Working Paper Series No. 651, Central Bank of Brazil, August 2026. Technical Appendix.

• The not so quiet revolution: signal and noise in central bank communication, with Caio Garzeri, Diogo Guillen, Antônio Lima and Victor Monteiro. Working Paper Series No. 635, Central Bank of Brazil, Nov 2025.

- Media coverage (in Portuguese):  Valor Econômico

*Presented at Machine Learning for Economics at Institutions – Bridging Research and Policy (KOF, BIS, BCB), October 2025 Meeting of the CCA Consultative Group of Monetary Policy of the BIS, 2024 CEMLA Conference - XXIX Meeting of the Central Bank Researchers Network, 46th Meeting of the Brazilian Econometric Society, and the Central Bank of Brazil

• Stochastic Volatility-in-mean VARs with Time-Varying Skewness, with Haroon Mumtaz and Ana Skoblar. October 2025.

*Presented at IAAE (2026), SNDE (2026), and ECB (2026)

• Monetary policy surprises, financial conditions, and the string theory revisited. Working Paper Series No. 573, Central Bank of Brazil, Jan 2023.

• Forecasting with VAR-teXt and DFM-teXt models: exploring the predictive power of central bank communication, June 2022. 

- Working Paper Series No. 559, Central Bank of Brazil, Nov 2021. Best Economics Paper of the Working Paper Series of 2021. 

Publications

• Bayesian Local Projections, with Silvia Miranda-Agrippino and Giovanni Ricco. The Review of Economics and Statistics, Volume 107, Issue 5, September 2025.

- Working Paper Series No. 581, Central Bank of Brazil, May 2023.

- Codes: github.com/leonardonferreira/BLP  

• Forward Guidance Matters: Disentangling Monetary Policy Shocks, Journal of Macroeconomics, Volume 73, September 2022. 

- Working Paper Series No. 530, Central Bank of Brazil, Aug 2020. Best Economics Paper of the Working Paper Series of 2020.

- Media coverage (in Portuguese):  Valor Econômico

- (Very) short video: MMF Society

• Macroprudential Policy in a DSGE Model: anchoring the countercyclical capital buffer, with Márcio I. Nakane. Economics Bulletin, 38(4), 2345-2352, 2018. 

- Longer version: Working Paper Series No. 407, Central Bank of Brazil, Dec 2015

- Ministry of Finance Award 2014, Second Best Macro Paper

Book Chapters

• Monetary policy decision making and communication under heightened uncertainty in Brazil, with Diogo Guillen. In Monetary Policy Decision-Making and Communication under High Uncertainty, edited by Eduardo Amaral, Fernando Avalos, and Ilhyock Shim, 39–50. BIS Paper No. 163, December 2025.

• Infrastructure Financing: analysis of the potential impact of regulatory changes (available in Portuguese only). In: Salviano Júnior, C; R. J. G. de Andrade; V. R. Brandi (Orgs.). Estudos sobre Regulação Financeira. Brasília: Banco Central do Brasil, 2017. Ch. 6. p. 129-154.      

Blog Post           

• Uma medida alternativa de incerteza para o  Brasil.   Série.

Policy           

• The Rise of Risk: From Science to Regulation, with Antônio J. D. Lima and Vinicius R. Brandi. XII Annual Seminar on Risk, Financial Stability and Banking of the Central Bank of Brazil, 2017.           

Referee Activity       

• Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Macroeconomics, International Review of Economics and Finance, International Journal of Finance and Economics, International Economics, Central Bank of Brazil Working Paper Series

Discussions       

• Discussion of Lemos and Sousa (2025): "Atas do Copom como fonte de previsão do PIB: Uma aplicaão de processamento de linguagem natural".  IX Workshop da Rede de Pesquisa do Banco Central. 

• Discussion of Costa et al. (2022): "Predicting recessions in real time using big data and canonical correlation".  VII Workshop da Rede de Pesquisa do Banco Central. 

• Discussion of Tomio and Vallet (2021):  "Carry trade and negative interest rate policy in Switzerland: Low-lying fog or storm?". 49th National Meeting of Economics (Brazil).

• Discussion of Caldeira, Santos and Torrent (2021): "Semiparametric Portfolio Policies". 21th Brazilian Finance Meeting. 

• Discussion of Gnan and Rieder (2021): "Who Talks During Monetary Policy Quiet Periods, and Why? Evidence from the European Central Bank's Governing Council". 25th Spring Meeting of the European Association of Young Economists.

• Discussion of Acosta-Smith, Bassanin and Sabuga (2021): "Dynamics of the Output Floor: A Model-Based Assessment". 8th Annual MMF PhD Conference.