Luba Petersen

Associate Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University

Department of Economics
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6
Email: lubap at sfu dot ca
Luba Petersen

About

I am an Associate Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University, where I co-direct the SFU Experimental Economics Laboratory. I am also a Research Associate of the NBER and a Monetary Policy Institute Research Fellow and Monetary Policy Council Member at the C.D. Howe Institute. I served as Department Special Advisor to the Bank of Canada in 2018 to 2019 and 2022, and as Visiting Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in 2022 to 2023.

My research focuses on the design of monetary policy and central bank communication to manage boundedly rational expectations and financial decisions. Most of my work uses experimental macroeconomies, where I study individual and group decision-making in response to different shocks and policies in a controlled laboratory setting. I also run randomized control trials through representative surveys and use more conventional empirical methods to study the design of central bank communication. More recently, I have been studying household wildfire mitigation through tailored feedback and fire risk information.

This work has been funded by the Bank of Canada, Deutsche Bundesbank, National Science Foundation, the Sury Initiative for Global Finance and International Risk Management, the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, SSHRC-SFU Institutional Grants, and SSHRC Insight Development and Insight Grants.

Research

Publications

Forthcoming
Beyond Technocracy: Toward a Holistic Approach to Central Bank Trust
with Sandra Eickmeier. European Journal of Political Economy
NBER WP 32716
2026
History-Dependent Monetary Policy: Less Is More
with Olena Kostyshyna and Jing Yang. European Economic Review
NBER WP 30530
2026
The ECB’s Climate Activities and Public Trust
with Sandra Eickmeier. European Economic Review
NBER WP 33103Bloomberg
2026
Dynamic Optimization Meets Budgeting: Unraveling Financial Complexities
with Guidon Fenig. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 244, 107333
NBER WP 32821
2025
Is Monetary and Fiscal Policy Conflict That Dire?
with Jeremy Kronick. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 172, 104982
Financial Post
2022
Macroeconomic Expectations, Central Bank Communication, and Background Uncertainty: A COVID-19 Laboratory Experiment
with Ryan Rholes. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 143, 104460
2021
Central Bank Communication That Works: Lessons from Lab Experiments
with Oleksiy Kryvtsov. Journal of Monetary Economics, 117, 760–780
2021
Coordinating Expectations through Central Bank Projections
with Fatemeh Mokhtarzadeh. Experimental Economics, 24, 883–918
2021
Should Central Banks Communicate Uncertainty in Their Projections?
with Ryan Rholes. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 183, 320–341
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
2017
Stabilizing Expectations at the Zero Lower Bound: Experimental Evidence
with Jasmina Arifovic. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 82, 21–43
2017
Distributing Scarce Jobs and Output: Experimental Evidence on the Dynamic Effects of Rationing
with Guidon Fenig. Experimental Economics, 20(3), 707–735
2015
Do Expectations and Decisions Respond to Monetary Policy?
Journal of Economic Studies, 42(6), 1047–1062
2014
Does Money Illusion Matter? Comment
American Economic Review, 104(3), 1047–1062
2014
Forecast Error Information and Heterogeneous Expectations in Learning-to-Forecast Macroeconomic Experiments
Research in Experimental Economics, 17, 109–137

Refereed policy publications

2022
Does Fiscal and Monetary Policy Coordination Matter?
with Jeremy Kronick. C.D. Howe Institute Commentary, 633, 1–24
2021
The Case for Raising the Bank of Canada’s Inflation Target
with Shannon Wells. Max Bell School of Public Policy Conference Volume 1: Choosing the Right Target, edited by Christopher Ragan and Stephen Gordon
2014
Recent Developments in Experimental Macroeconomics
with Robert Amano and Oleksiy Kryvtsov. Bank of Canada Review, Autumn 2014, 1–11

Refereed non-economics publications

2022
Identifying Risk Factors, Patient-Reported Experience and Outcome Measures, and Data Capture Tools for an Individualized Pain Prediction Tool in Pediatrics: Focus Group Study
Wood, M.D., West, N.C., Sreepada, R., Loftsgard, K.C., Petersen, L., Robillard, J.M., Page, P., Ridgway, R., Chadha, N.K., Portales-Casamar, E., and Görges, M. JMIR Perioperative Medicine, 5(1), e42341

Edited special issues

2025
Introduction to the Special Issue on Computational and Experimental Economics in Memory of Jasmina Arifovic
with Herbert Dawid and Cars Hommes. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 172, 104978
2025
Introduction to the Special Issue in Honor of Jasmina Arifovic
with John Duffy, Janet Jiang, Daniela Puzzello, and Isabelle Salle. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 239(C)

Working papers

Rounding Up: Complexity, Satisficing, and Bias in Inflation Expectations
with Michael McMahon and Ryan Rholes
Beyond ‘Looking Through’: Monetary Policy Responses and Communication Under Supply-Driven Inflation
with Olena Kostyshyna and Jing Yang
BoC SWP 2026-39
Macroeconomic Literacy and Expectations: The Asymmetric Effect of Inflation Targets
with Michael Mirdamadi and Hung Truong
The Effects of Communicating Inflation Uncertainty on Household Expectations and Spending
with Olena Kostyshyna
NBER WP 32939BoC SWP 2023-63
Escaping Secular Stagnation with Unconventional Monetary Policy
with Ryan Rholes
NBER WP 30117
Expectations and Monetary Policy: Experimental Evidence
with Oleksiy Kryvtsov
AppendixCBC coverage

Work in progress

Household Wildfire Mitigation in British Columbia: Evidence from a Randomized Trial of Risk Information and Tailored Feedback
with Samuel Basoah, Priscilla Fisher, and Fatemeh Mokhtarzadeh. Draft available on request
Central Bank Communication and Bounded Rationality
Book chapter in Behavioural Macroeconomics: Theory and Policy Applications, edited by Cars Hommes, Joep Lustenhouwer, and Christin R. Proaño, Cambridge University Press
Effective Lower Bound, Inflation Expectations, and Optimal Monetary Policy: Evidence from the Laboratory
with Olivier Armantier and Damjan Pfajfar
Do Prices Reveal Information about Dividends in Asymmetric Sequential Asset Markets?
with Rosemarie Nagel

Lab & Experimental Macroeconomics

SFU Experimental Economics Laboratory. I co-direct SFU's experimental economics lab. The lab runs computerized experiments with SFU students on questions across economics. Visit the lab

Workshop on Theoretical and Experimental Macroeconomics. I have co-organized this annual workshop since 2019. The 17th edition was held June 4 to 5, 2026, at the Barcelona School of Economics Summer Forum. Workshop page

Summer Schools in Experimental Macroeconomics. I have co-organized six summer schools since 2019, held in Ottawa, Berlin, Barcelona, Singapore and online, which together have trained over 100 PhD students and early-career researchers in experimental macroeconomics. Past workshops and schools