I am an Associate Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University. I am also co-director of the SFU Experimental Economics Laboratory, Research Associate of the NBER, Research Fellow for the CEPR RPN in Central Bank Communication, Advisory Council Member for the Society for Computational Economics, and Monetary Policy Institute fellow for the C.D. Howe Institute. I also served as Department Special Advisor to the Bank of Canada from 2018-2019 and 2022 and Visiting Fellow in the Economics Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2022-2023.

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 involves the implementation of experimental macroeconomies, where I study -- in a controlled laboratory setting -- individual and group decision-making in response to different types of shocks and policies. I also conduct randomized control trials through representative surveys and use more conventional empirical methods to study questions related to the design of central bank communication.

I am particularly interested in how to explain more complex monetary policies that involve history-dependence and make-up strategies to the general public. I also have a series of papers exploring the design of forward guidance and central bank projections. Another branch of my work explores how people reason through consumption-saving problems and whether their ability to optimize 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.

Curriculum Vitae

Working Papers

A Horse Race of Monetary Policy Regimes: An Experimental Investigation

with Olena Kostysyhna and Jing Yang

[NBER version]   [Appendix]

The effects of communicating inflation uncertainty on household expectations

with Olena Kostysyhna

Escaping Secular Stagnation with Unconventional Monetary Policy

with Ryan Rholes

[NBER version]

Macroeconomic literacy and expectations

with Michael Mirdamadi - (new version coming soon)

Expectations and monetary policy: Experimental evidence      [Appendix]

with Oleksiy Kryvtsov

Does Fiscal and Monetary Policy Coordination Matter?

with Jeremy Kronick

Revise and resubmit, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control

Selected work in progress (drafts available upon request)

“Improving Financial Decision-Making: Insights from Dynamic Optimization with a Budgeting Calculator” with Guidon Fenig

“Animal Spirits and Endogenous Cycles: New Experimental Evidence” with Steffi Huber

“Rounding and Uncertainty: Experimental Evidence” with Michael McMahon and Ryan Rholes

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

Publications

[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.

[WP version]

[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.

[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] 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]

Refereed policy publications

[2022] Crossed Wires: Does Fiscal and Monetary Policy Cooordination Matter?

with Jeremy Kronick

C.D. Howe Commentary No. 633
Media coverage: Financial Post, MNI

[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

[2014] Recent Developments in Experimental Macroeconomics

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

Non-economics refereed publications

[2022] Development of an individualized pain prediction tool in pediatrics – Identification of risk factors, patient reported experience and outcome measures, and data capture tools for pre- and post-operative use

Wood, M.D., West, N.C., Sreepada, R. Loftsgard, KC., Jordan, I., Petersen, L. Whyte, S.D., Lauder, G.R., Portales-Casamar, E., and Görges, M.

JMIR Perioperative Medicine, 5(1), e4234.

Current projects

“Neofisherian vs. New Keynesian Expectations” with Marieh Azizirad and Lucas Herrenbrueck