We investigate the relationship between oil windfalls and income inequality using the subnational data of one of the resource-richest and most unequal countries in the world – Russia. While previous literature has produced contradictory findings due to the use of an aggregate measure of oil...

This paper studies optimal monetary policy under rational inattention: the policy maker optimally chooses her information subject to a processing constraint. Our analytical results emphasize how the policy maker’s information choices shape her expectations and the dynamics of the macroeconomy....

Developing countries are facing the Covid-19 epidemic with particular challenges, such as their economic and labor force composition. In this research I will extend the so-called SIR-macro model with demand and supply effects to study how the size of the informal sector impact the ability of...

Can shifts in the credit supply generate a boom-bust cycle similar to the one observed in the US around 2008? To answer this question, we develop a general equilibrium model that combines a rich heterogeneous agent overlapping-generations structure of households who make housing tenure decisions...

This essay studies the fundamental causes of the monetary policy regime switches within rational expectations models. I introduce a threshold-switching monetary policy process into the model that links the policy stance to the fundamental shocks by an autoregressive regime strength index. It...

We develop a generally applicable full-information inference method for heterogeneous agent models, combining aggregate time series data and repeated cross sections of micro data. To handle unobserved aggregate state variables that affect cross-sectional distributions, we compute a numerically...

The existence of a unique optimum, a unique optimal stationary program, and a turnpike theorem are demonstrated for a neoclassical one sector optimal growth model. The planner's allocation problem is formulated as a discrete time deterministic, infinite horizon programming model. The production...

This paper studies the interaction between fiscal commitment and sovereign default risk in a model with optimal taxation and government spending. A time-inconsistency problem arises in our framework as the government cannot credibly commit to its future tax policies. As a result, it chooses...

We documented that for some oil-exporting countries, the correlation between exchange rates and oil prices is strongly negative during periods of significant oil price drop but is much weaker during other periods. To interpret this time-varying asymmetric correlation, we develop and estimate a...

This paper documents that, even within a narrowly defined product and port-to-port route, the maritime international freight rates are lower for larger importing firms. Even after controlling for shipment sizes, the 90th-percentile importing firm faces a 20% lower freight rate and, as a...