I am a third-year PhD candidate at Sciences Po Paris at the Department of Economics, under the supervision of Stéphane Guibaud and benefit from the advice of Nicolas Coeurdacier and Paul Bouscasse as members of my comittee.
Research interests: financial and monetary macroeconomics, sovereign debt, central banking.
Contact: theodore.humann@sciencespo.fr
Academic contributions
Do Disinflation Policies Ravage Central Bank Finances?
with Kris J. Mitchener and Eric Monnet.
Economic Policy, 2025, vol. 40
Abstract: Advanced-economy central banks are currently generating losses. To examine whether these are attributable to the current rate-tightening cycle, we examine the finances of ten advanced-economy central banks during the 1970s and 1980s, the most notable and comparable policy environment to the present. In response to the anti-inflationary measures of the 1980s, central bank profits actually increased, suggesting that disinflation campaigns, in and of themselves, are not the source of present-day losses. We discuss how central bank profits depend on their policy instruments as well as their balance-sheet position when rate tightening begins. Unlike today, central banks in the 1980s avoided losses because they did not remunerate bank reserves and their balance sheets did not carry the legacy of a decade of large asset purchases at low interest rates and long maturity. Our counterfactuals show that only a combination of these factors could have triggered losses in the 1980s: none of them is sufficient on its own. Where losses emerged in the late 1970s, before the Volcker shock, they were due to foreign-exchange reserves depreciating. In these instances, when central banks carried them forward and did not rely on transfers from the government, there was no loss of central bank independence or their ability to fight inflation.
Sovereign guarantees - Work in progress.
Central Bank Finances in History - Work in progress, with Kris J. Mitchener and Eric Monnet.
Policy Contributions
The Road to Zambia's 2020 Sovereign Debt Default, Finance For Development Lab Report, December 2023
Disinflation Policies and Central Bank Finances, CEPR column, July 2023, with K. Mitchener and E. Monnet
Faut-il s'inquiéter des pertes des banques centrales ?, Lettre du CEPII n°440, September 2023, with K. Mitchener and E. Monnet
Public debt decomposition tool developed for the Finance for Development Lab (Paris School of Economics). At the disposal of debt researchers and analysts, it builds on the IMF DSAs, based on statistics from the IMF and the World Bank, and is accompanied by a detailed methodological note on public debt decompositions
Faire face à l'inflation, Les Cahiers Français, March-April 2023, with A. Frot and V. Riblier
Book chapters
Les pertes des banques centrales: enjeux financiers et d'économie politique, L'économie mondiale 2025, Editions La Découverte, Chapitre X.