Research

Publications

• “Regulating corporate misconduct: Training mandates and ESG performance of U.S. firms,” with Jaap Donker, Toni Sipic, and David Zuckerman, International Journal of Corporate Governance, Forthcoming. (ABDC: B)
• “Navigating geopolitical risks: The impact of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute on global rare earth markets and diversification strategies,” with Youngho Kang and Hayoung Oh, Resources Policy, 2025. (ABDC: B)
• “Reducing the United States’ risks of dependency on China in the rare earth market,” with Tennecia Dacass, Resources Policy, 2022. (ABDC: B)
• “Reflections on the Volcker rule: Innovations in the financial services industry and fixing too big to succeed,” with Koushik Ghosh, Challenge, 2022: 1-10.
• “Financial market integration, exchange rate policy, and the dynamics of business and employment in Korea,” with Matteo Cacciatore and Fabio Ghironi, NBER Chapter in: International Finance in the Global Markets, Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 42 (December 2016, lead article): 79-99. (ABDC: A)

Working Papers

• “Strategic communication and investor reactions to earnings downgrades,” with Han Donker, John Nofsinger, and Laurel Orr. Under review at Accounting, Organizations, and Society. (ABDC: A*)
• “Stablecoins, the GENIUS Act, and monetary aggregates: A DSGE approach.” Under review at Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money. (ABDC: A)
• “Excessive firm turnover in the shadow of unemployment.”

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Poster version

Abstract: This paper studies how pecuniary self-employment affects business cycle dynamics, macroeconomic efficiency, and the outcomes of structural reforms. I employ a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous producer entry. One sector (the “hiring sector”) is populated by monopolistically competitive firms that employ workers subject to search-and-matching frictions in order to produce output. The other sector consists of self-employment firms that use the output of the first sector as input. Self-employment is introduced as a possible occupational choice for the unemployed, relating firm creation more directly to the state of the labor market and to workers’ opportunity costs. Consistent with the U.S. data, the model shows that self-employment represents 7.4% of employment and is procyclical. The procyclicality of self-employment arises as positive productivity shocks in the hiring sector cause profits for the self-employed to rise strongly enough that additional unemployed workers are drawn into self-employment, despite tighter labor market conditions and a competing incentive to seek traditional employment. As a result, the number of firms is more volatile and welfare costs of business cycles are higher in the presence of self-employment. Novel sources of inefficiency exist since neither workers nor firms internalize the consequences of self-employment. This dispels the common misconception that all labor market rigidities increase self-employment; on the contrary, economies with almost no unemployment benefits or a very weak bargaining power could still show high self-employment rates. Furthermore, I show that reforms facilitating entry in one or the other sector are more effective when the self-employed are relatively less productive or have greater monopoly power.

• “Trade liberalization and structural reforms under self-employment.”

Abstract: Self-employment is much more prominent in small open economies and extremely concentrated in nontraded service sector goods that do not require very high skills and have low barrier to entry. I construct a two-sector dynamic, general equilibrium model in a small open economy framework where the self-employed produce nontradable goods. Through this setup, I ask the consequences of trade liberalization and its effect on the wage inequality under the presence of self-employment.

• “Growth, unemployment, and the public sector.”

Abstract: The public sector wage bill represents an important component of total employment and fiscal expenditures. For the U.S. economy, it accounts for 60% of government expenditures. Despite these facts, our understanding of how public sector employment and wages affect long-run macroeconomic performance remains surprisingly limited. This paper attempts to contribute to filling this gap by setting out a rich but tractable model of endogenous growth with search and matching frictions where the private sector produces output using private sector labor, capital and public infrastructure. This simple structure allows us to analyze how public sector wages and vacancies affect unemployment and growth. Our setup highlights how the decision to invest in public infrastructure to enhance growth might have unintended consequences on the unemployment rate, which is a novel mechanism in the literature. Furthermore, we investigate if appropriate public sector wages and vacancies can internalize the externality from public infrastructure in the presence of production externalities.