I am an Assistant Professor of Finance at Imperial College Business School. I am a macroeconomist with interests in monetary economics, financial intermediation, and macrofinance. My research focuses on the interactions between monetary policy and financial stability.
PhD in Economics, 2019 - 2024
University of California San Diego
MA in International and Development Economics, 2015 - 2016
Yale University
BSc in Economics, 2009 - 2012
London School of Economics
A vast theoretical literature claims that increasing interest rates reduce bank leverage, making banks safer. Validating this empirically is key to understanding monetary policy transmission and its impact on financial stability. I show that raising interest rates increases bank leverage. I propose and validate the loan-loss mechanism: contractionary shocks increase loan losses, reduce profits and equity, thus raising leverage. I document why existing models cannot account for this and develop a model of bank risk transformation where floating-rate loans convert interest rate risk to credit risk, leading to loan losses. Empirical evidence from microdata is consistent with the model’s predictions.
Prizes: Young Economist Prize (Runner-Up), Southern Economic Association Graduate Student Prize, Rady School of Management Libby Award, Walter Heller Memorial Prize (Best 3rd Year Paper)
Recent and Upcoming Presentations: Society for Economic Dynamics Annual Meeting, Annual International Journal of Central Banking Research Conference, FIRS, IFABS Oxford, BIS-CEPR-Gerzensee-SFI Conference on Financial Intermediation, London Juniors Finance Workshop, Bank of Finland and CEPR Joint Conference on Monetary Policy
Cieslak et al. (2019) document that between 1994 and 2016, the US equity premium is earned entirely in even weeks of the Federal Open Market Committee cycle, and these even weeks also drive returns internationally. Updating their data, I show this result does not hold out-of-sample, weakening as early as 2004. Their proposed mechanism—informal leaks following biweekly board meetings—ceases after 2004, as meetings are no longer biweekly. Before 2004, outliers appear to drive the result. Finally, I construct central bank cycles for the UK and Japan and show that, when accounting for pre-announcement effects, the international result disappears.
We propose a model to study the consequences of including financial stability among the central bank’s objectives when market players are strategic, and surprises compromise their stability. In this setup, central banks underreact to economic shocks, a prediction consistent with the Federal Reserve’s behavior during the 2023 banking crisis. Moreover, policymakers’ stability concerns bias investors’ choices, inducing inefficiency. If the central bank has private information about its policy intentions, the equilibrium forward guidance entails an information loss, highlighting a trade-off between stabilizing markets through policy and communication. A “kitish” central banker, who puts less weight on stability, reduces these inefficiencies.
This paper analyzes food inflation trends in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from 2000 to 2016 using two novel datasets of disaggregated CPI baskets. Average food inflation is higher, more volatile, and similarly persistent as non-food non-fuel inflation, especially in low-income countries in SSA. We find evidence that food inflation became less persistent from 2009 onwards, related to recent improvements in monetary policy frameworks. We also find that high food prices are driven mainly by non-tradable food in SSA and there is incomplete pass-through from world food and fuel prices and exchange rates to domestic food prices. Taken together, these finding suggest that central banks in low-income countries with high and persistent food inflation should continue to pay attention to headline inflation to anchor inflation expectations. Other policy levers include reducing tariffs and improving storage and transport infrastructure to reduce food pressures.
Teaching Assistant: 2023
Teaching Assistant: 2022
Teaching Assistant: 2020, 2021, 2022
Teaching Assistant: 2021
Guest Lecturer: 2016