I am a professor at New York University Abu Dhabi. Interests: Macroeconomics in (almost) all its variants. I am also a Research Fellow at the CEPR and a research collaborator at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB). My CV is here [.pdf] and my current research below. E-mail me to: rs8561[at]nyu.edu
News! Don and I have created a GitHub U.S. Labor Share repository where we provide the most updated annual and quarterly time series of the labor share for the United States. Our preferred meaure of the labor share treats intellectual property products (IPP) as ambiguous income (analogous to the pre-1999 BEA accounting that treated IPP as intermediate expense). We also provide alternative measures of the labor share treating IPP as capital income. We do this separately for the aggregate economy and the corporate sector.
News, Summer 2024! Check out the workshops that I co-organize @ the BSE Summer Forum (calls for 2024 are out!):
'Excess of Transfer Progressivity in the Village', with Francesco Carli and Albert Rodriguez-Sala
With primary data from a complete village in Malawi we find that the level of transfer progressivity is large. The solution to a village-calibrated OLG model with limited commitment and private information implies an optimal level of transfer progressivity that is one third that of the village data. Interestingly, the current transfer progressiviy turns out to be close to optimal in a "pre-fertilizer era". We rationalize our findings with social norms (a wedge on participation constraints) that are sluggish to economic change.
'Progressivity and Development', with Leandro de Magalhaes and Enric Martorell
Adding formal and informal transfers, we show that transfer progressivity in poor countries is four times larger than in rich countries. We quantitatively assess the implications of transfer progressivity for cross-country income per capita differences and dicuss its optimality across stages of development.
'Resilient Kaldor: Growth Facts with Intellectual Property Products Capital', with Sangmin Aum and Dongya Koh
The long-run growth facts in Kaldor (1957) stand strong after all.
'Higher and Increasingly Higher Relative HIV Risk for Women: Evidence from Nearly One Million Blood Tests', with Christian Aleman and Daniela Iorio
We mine 1 million HIV tests to empirically show how the HIV epidemic diffuses across demographic and economic groups. We show how the patterns of HIV infection change across stages of the epidemic.
'Insurance Beyond Kinship: Evidence from Network Formation and Transfers in a Village Malawi', with Leandro de Magalhaes, Ying Feng, Pau Milan and Albert Rodriguez-Sala
We use primary data from a village in rural Malawi to assess kinship's role in insurance against income shocks. While kinship increases the likelihood and size of transfers, it doesn't significantly affect transfers after adverse shocks, with cross-kinship mechanisms becoming more important. Village-level data shows higher insurance and transfer progressivity than kinship-level analysis. We propose a model where kinship groups interact at the village level, aligning with cultural evidence that supports the village as the key unit for understanding transfers in Bantu Africa.
Working Papers
'The Unequal Battle Against Infertility: Theory and Evidence from IVF Success', with Daniela Iorio, Fane Groes, Anna Houstecka [.pdf] [Online Appendix]
Using administrative Danish data we show that more educated women have higher success in IVF outcomes, and that ability proxies such as grade point average (GPAs) explain this gradient. Building a dynamic model of post-IVF-failure dropout choice, where women differ in latent factors such as ability and psychological costs, we find that ability explains 87% of the education gradient in IVF success, prompting a policy discussion.
'A Quantitative Theory of the HIV Epidemic: Education, Risky Sex and Asymmetric Learning', with Christian Aleman and Daniela Iorio [.pdf]
We explore learning about HIV infection odds from risky sex as a new mechanism explaining the Sub-Saharan Africa HIV epidemic. Our novel empirical evidence reveals a U-shaped relationship between education and being HIV positive across epidemic stages, which prompts the idea of asymmetric learning: more educated individuals potentially learn faster and update their (latent) beliefs about infection odds more accurately than less educated individuals, inducing earlier sexual behavioral change among the more educated. Using a nonstationary model that incorporates three HIV epidemic stages (myopic, learning, and ARV arrival) we find that our learning mechanism is powerful: a 5-year earlier learning reduces new AIDS deaths by almost 45%, and a 10-year earlier learning results in a 60% drop.
'A Stage-Based Identification of Policy Effects', with Christian Aleman, Chris Busch and Alex Ludwig [.pdf] [Online Appendix]
We propose a new method to identify policy effects consisting of a time-to-stage transformation that maps pre-policy (regional) outcome paths onto a reference path. Our method uncovers (regional) heterogeneity across stages at the time of policy implementation which we use to assess the effects of nationwide policy. We show several applications including stay-home policies against Covid-19, the effects of the 1960 FDA approval of oral contraceptives on fertility and women's college education and economic growth policy (e.g. German Reunification).
Manuscripts Under Revision for Resubmission
'Countercyclical Elasticity of Substitution', with Dongya Koh [.pdf]
Revise & Resubmit, Review of Economic Studies
'How Much are SVARs with Long-Run Restrictions Missing without Cyclically Moving Factor Shares?' [.pdf]
'The Costs of Consumption Smoothing: Less Schooling and Less Nutrition' (2019) [.pdf] [Online Appendix]
with Dongya Koh and Leandro de Magalhaes
Journal of Demographic Economics (Leading Article)
'Natural Resources and Global Misallocation' (2019) [.pdf]
with Alex Monge-Naranjo and Juan Sanchez
AEJ: Macroeconomics
'The Price of Growth: Consumption Insurance in China 1989-2009' (2018) [.pdf] [Online Appendix]
with Yu Zheng
AEJ: Macroeconomics (Leading Article)
'The Consumption, Income and Wealth of the Poorest: Cross-Sectional Facts of Rural and Urban Sub-Saharan Africa for Macroeconomists' (2018) [.pdf] [Online Appendix]
'The Relationship between Age at First Birth and Mother's Lifetime Earnings: Evidence from Danish Register Data', with Mallory Leung and Fane Groes [.pdf]
PLoS ONE (2016), 11(1), DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0146989
with Jose-Victor Rios-Rull, Frank Schorfheide, Cristina Fuentes-Albero and Maxym Khrysko
Journal of Monetary Economics (2012), 59(8), pp. 826-846.
'Redistributive Shocks and Productivity Shocks' [.pdf] [code]
with Jose-Victor Rios-Rull
Journal of Monetary Economics (2010), 57(8), pp. 931-948.
Other Publications
"Economic activity and public health policy: A note on the COVID-19 pandemic" (2021) [.pdf] [pdf [in Catalan]]
Notes d'Economia
"Contrasting U.S. and European Job Markets during COVID-19" (2021) [.pdf] with Jean-Benoît Eyméoud, Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau and Etienne Wasmer
FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, vol. 2021(05), pages 01-05, February.
"Increasing and Decreasing Labor Shares: Cross-Country Differences in the XXI Century" (2019) [.pdf] with Sangmin Aum and Dongya Koh
ICE: Revista de Economia, 2019 (911)
"Should Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?" (2019) [.pdf] with Alex Monge-Naranjo and Juan Sanchez
St. Louis FED Review, 2019
Discussions (some recent)
A Discussion on "Trade-Induced Urbanization and the Making of Modern Agriculture" by Yuan Tian, Junjie Xia, and Rudai Yang (2024) [.pdf]
Annual STEG-CEPR Conference, Abu Dhabi, January 2024
A Discussion on "(Most) global and country shocks are in fact sector shocks" by Lukas Boeckelmann, Jean Imbs, Laurent Pauwels (2023) [.pdf]
Annual CEBRA Conference, Abu Dhabi, November 2023
A Discussion on "The Macroeconomics of Intensive Agriculture" by Timo Boppart, Patrick Kiernan, Per Krusell and Hannes Malmberg (2022) [.pdf]
Annual Meeting of the CEPR Macroeconomics and Growth Programme, Dublin, November 2022
Some Work in Progress
'Labor Dynamics and Actual Telework Use during Covid-19: Skills, Occupations and Industries’
with Jean-Benoit Eyméoud, Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau and Etienne Wasmer [.pdf]
'Why Is Food Consumption Inequality Underestimated? A Story of Vices and Children,’
with Boyao Zhang and Yu Zheng [.pdf] [Online Appendix]
'Aggregate Effects of AIDS on Development' [.pdf] New draft coming soon!
'Eating Up Productivity: Social Insurance Barriers to Structural Change', with Albert Rodriguez-Sala
'Insurance and Incentives in Times of AIDS' with Francesco Carli
'Optimal Tax Progressivity in a Union', with Sarah Zoi
'Balanced Growth Path and Preferences: There is No Need for CRRA Felicity Functions', with Jose-Victor Rios-Rull.
Research Interests
Inequality, Intellectual Property Products and the Macroeconomy
Social Insurance, Resource Misallocation and Economic Growth
HIV/AIDS Epidemics and the Macroeconomy
Stage-Based Identification and Policy Evaluation
Teaching
NYUAD
[Econ MSc] Macroeconomics II: spr2024
[Econ UGr] Economic Policy: spr2024
UPenn
[Econ PhD] Topics in Advanced Macro, Development: fall2022
