Working papers

Kinky Europe: Evidence from the Regional Phillips Curve in the Euro Area
with Gabriel Züllig (SNB)

We estimate the slope of the Phillips curve in the euro area, allowing for nonlinearities – or kinks – in the relationship between labor market slack and inflation. We exploit cross-country variation in labor market conditions in the period 2001-2024, absorbing aggregate shocks and endogenous monetary policy reactions with time fixed effects. We find that while the Phillips curve is usually quite flat, it becomes at least three times as steep if the labor market is sufficiently tight. This kink is more pronounced in the euro area than in the United States, potentially because of more rigid labor markets. 


Local Shocks and Internal Migration: The Disparate Effects of Robots and Chinese imports in the US
with Andrés Sarto (New York University) and Marco Tabellini (Harvard Business School)
Featured in Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
R&R at European Economic Review

Do local labor markets adjust to economic shocks through migration? In this paper, we study this question by focusing on  two of the most important shocks that hit US manufacturing since the 1990s: Chinese import competition and the introduction of industrial robots. We find that, even though both shocks drastically reduced manufacturing employment, only robots led to a sizable decline in population. We  provide evidence that negative employment spillovers outside manufacturing, caused by robots but not by Chinese imports, can explain the different migration responses.