Curriculum vita

Curriculum vita

• Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 2018–present
• Economics
• B.S., University of Chicago
• 2015
• Math, Economics, Chinese

• Monetary economics, macroeconomics, theory

• Toward an understanding of the economics of apologies: evidence from a large-scale natural field experiment. The Economic Journal, 2022.

  with Ben Ho, John A. List, and Ian Muir
  ▸ Abstract
  We use a theory of apologies to analyze a nationwide field experiment involving 1.5 million Uber ridesharing consumers who experienced late rides. Several insights emerge. First, apologies are not a panacea: the efficacy of an apology and whether it may backfire depend on how the apology is made. Second, across treatments, money speaks louder than words - the best form of apology is to include a coupon for a future trip. Third, in some cases sending an apology is worse than sending nothing at all, particularly for repeated apologies. For firms, caveat venditor should be the rule when considering apologies.

• Optimal monetary policy with menu costs is nominal wage targeting, 2022.

  with Daniele Caratelli
  ▸ Abstract
  We show analytically that ensuring stable nominal wage growth is optimal monetary policy in a multisector economy with menu costs. This nominal wage targeting contrasts with inflation targeting, the optimal policy prescribed by the textbook New Keynesian model in which firms are permitted to adjust their prices only randomly and exogenously. The intuition is that stabilizing nominal wages minimizes the number of firms which need to adjust their prices, and therefore minimizes the amount of resources wasted on menu costs. We show that the analytical result that nominal wage targeting is superior to inflation targeting carries over in a rich quantitative model.

• Monetary Misperceptions: Optimal monetary policy under incomplete information, 2017.

  ▸ Abstract
  Inflation targeting is strictly suboptimal when economic actors have incomplete information about the state of the economy. Nominal income targeting is approximately optimal, and exactly optimal under certain parameterizations. We derive this result in a “Lucas islands” monetary misperceptions model built from, unlike prior work, explicit microfoundations. Agents have knowledge of local productivity and money supply conditions, but must perform a signal extraction problem each period to estimate the aggregate productivity shock and the aggregate money supply shock. Without full information, agents cannot perfectly distinguish between relative price shocks and aggregate shocks, causing monetary policy to affect the real economy. Since the model is built from agents optimizing from first principles, we are able to take a second-order welfare approximation and ask what monetary policy rule is optimal. In contrast to sticky price or sticky information models, inflation and price level targeting are always suboptimal, as price level variation provides useful information to agents. Under log utility, nominal income targeting is optimal.

• Global Priorities Fellowship (Global Priorities Institute) 2022-23
• Emergent Ventures Grant (Mercatus Center) 2021-22
• WCEG Doctoral Grant (Washington Center for Equitable Growth) 2021-22
• Humane Studies Fellow (Institute for Humane Studies) 2021
• Oskar Morgenstern Fellow (Mercatus Center) 2021-22
• Avanessians Fellowship (MIT) 2018–
• Phi Beta Kappa (UChicago) 2015
• Becker-Friedman Institute Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Service (UChicago) 2015

• Uber
• Data Scientist (Ubernomics)
• 2017 – 2018
• AQR Capital Management
• Research Analyst
• 2015 – 2016

• Equitable Growth conference 2022
• WashU: Economics Graduate Student Conference 2021
• UChicago: Advances with Field Experiments 2019
• AEAs 2018
• Université Paris-Sud: RITM 2017
• UChicago: Advances with Field Experiments 2017

• Last updated: September 2022