My research focuses on expectations and decision making in macroeconomic environments. I develop procedures for implementing macroeconomies in controlled laboratory experiments to study policy-relevant questions.

My recent research investigates the ability of monetary policy and central bank communication to stabilize and guide expectations and markets. I am currently studying the determinants of effective communication to the general public as well as financial markets. Another branch of my work explores how people reason through dynamic optimization problems and whether their ability can be improved through effective tools and education.

These projects have been funded by various institutions and programs including the Bank of Canada, the National Science Foundation, the Sury Initative for Global Finance and International Risk Management, SSHRC-SFU Institutional Grants, as well as SSHRC Insight Development and Insight Grants. My research has been profiled by the CBC and FASS @ SFU.

Curriculum Vitae

Working Papers

Central Bank Communication That Works: Lessons from Lab Experiments

with Oleksiy Kryvtsov

Forthcoming, Journal of Monetary Economics

Coordinating expectations through central bank projections

with Fatemeh Mokhtarzadeh

Forthcoming,     Experimental Economics

Should central banks communicate uncertainty in their projections?

with Ryan Rholes

Forthcoming, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

The Case for Raising the Bank of Canada's Inflation Target

with Shannon Wells

Forthcoming, Max Bell School of Public Policy Conference Volume 1: Choosing the Right Target

Macroeconomic literacy and expectations

with Michael Mirdamadi

Escaping Secular Stagnation with Unconventional Monetary Policy

with Ryan Rholes

Expectations and monetary policy: Experimental evidence      [Appendix]

with Oleksiy Kryvtsov

Forecast dispersion and central bank communication: Textual analysis using LIWC" with Stephen Rouse

(draft available upon request)

“Do prices reveal information about dividends in asymmetric sequential asset markets?” with Jess Benhabib and Rosemarie Nagel

(draft available upon request)

Publications

[2018] Deflating asset price bubbles with leverage constraints and monetary policy

with Guidon Fenig and Mariya Mileva

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 155, 1-27.

[WP version]

[2017] Stabilizing expectations at the zero lower bound: Experimental evidence

with Jasmina Arifovic  

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 82, 21-43.

[WP version]

[2017] Distributing scarce jobs and output: experimental evidence on the dynamic effects of rationing

with Guidon Fenig,   Experimental Economics, 20(3), 707-735.

[WP version] ,  [Appendix]

[2015]  Do Expectations and Decisions Respond to Monetary Policy? Journal of Economic Studies, 42(6), 1047-1062. 

* Special Issue in Experimental Macroeconomics  

[WP version]

[2014] Does Money Illusion Matter?: Comment

with Abel Winn, American Economic Review, 104(3):1047-1062.

[WP version] ,  [Appendix] 

[2014] Recent Developments in Experimental Macroeconomics

with Robert Amano and Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Bank of Canada Review, Autumn 2014, 1-11. 

[2014] Forecast Error Information and Heterogenous Expectations in Learning to Forecast Macroeconomic Experiments

“Experiments in Macroeconomics”, Vol. 17, Research in Experimental Economics, 109-137.

[WP version]

Work in Progress

“Dynamic Optimization” with Guidon Fenig

“Overconfidence” with Ciril Bosch-Rosa, Daniel Gietl, and Frank Heinemann

“Communicating Uncertainty” with Olena Kostyshyna

“Does Policy Communication Matter More During a Pandemic?” with Ryan Rholes