Hi, welcome to my website!

 I am an applied macroeconomist and time-series econometrician and hold a position with the Research Centre of the Deutsche Bundesbank.  

My research is concerned with forecast uncertainty,  the dynamics of survey expectations, and informational frictions.  Most of the time, I end up solving signal extraction problems. 

My work is also posted at IDEAS, SSRN, GoogleScholar, ResearcherID, ORCID, GitHub and Deutsche Bundesbank

The word cloud on the right has been generated with Scholar Goggler.

LATEST RESEARCH: 

Shadow-rate VARs (working paper)

with Andrea Carriero (Queen Mary University of London, U Bologna), Todd Clark (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland), Massimiliano Marcellino (Bocconi, IGIER and CEPR)

Abstract: VARs are popular for forecasting and structural analysis, but ill-suited to handle occasionally binding constraints, like the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates. We extend the VAR framework by modeling interest rates as censored observations of a latent shadow-rate process, and propose an efficient sampler for Bayesian estimation of such ``shadow-rate VARs.'' We find benefits to including both actual and shadow rates serve as explanatory variables.  Historical shadow-rate estimates indicate that the FOMC would have set the funds rate much lower than it could during recent ELB episodes.  In historical forecast accuracy, when compared to a standard VAR, shadow-rate VARs generate superior predictions for interest rates and deliver some gains for macroeconomic variables.   Our structural analysis of shocks to financial conditions show strong differences in the reaction of interest rates depending on whether the ELB binds or not, with implications for the response of economic activity to the shocks.

Earlier versions of this paper were also earlier circulated under the title “Forecasting with Shadow-Rate VARs.”


Survey expectations and forecast uncertainty (forthcoming, Edward Elgar Handbook chapter)

with Todd E. Clark (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland)

Abstract: In recent decades, the collection of survey expectations for macroeconomic variables has gained considerable attention. A bourgeoning literature has developed that studies not only the predictive content of survey data, but also its usefulness in testing economic theories about the behavior of forward-looking decision makers under uncertainty. Leading examples of economic survey data include surveys of experts (including professional forecasters and financial market participants), households and firms.  Point forecasts of professional forecasters have, on balance, emerged as competitive (albeit not fully optimal) predictors of future outcomes. Meanwhile, ex-ante measures of uncertainty derived from probabilistic surveys have been found to be systematically at variance with the distribution of ex-post outcomes. Nevertheless, puzzles remain and the analysis and design of expectation surveys is an active field of research.


NONE of the material posted on this personal website necessarily represents the views of 

the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Eurosystem, the Bank for International Settlements, 

the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or the Federal Open Market Committee.