Faculty & Research

Roberto Rigobon

Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management
Professor of Applied Economics

Biography | Publications

Roberto Rigobon's areas of research are international economics, monetary economics, and development economics. In international economics, Roberto focuses on the causes of balance-of-payments crises, financial crises, and the propagation of them across countries - the phenomenon that has been identified in the literature as contagion. He has developed econometric techniques to determine the existence of contagion and the extent of it. Currently he is working with Anna Pavlova to develop theoretical models of multiple assets in general equilibrium to study the interaction between terms of trade, stock markets, exchange rates, and financial constraints. He is also working with Gita Gopinath in a series of papers understanding firm's international pricing practices.

In monetary economics, he studies the behavior of financial markets and their interaction with monetary policy. In particular, his two most recent papers in the area study: (i) how the Federal Reserve in the US determines its interest rate policy when there is an increase in the stock market index, and (ii) what is the impact of monetary policy shocks in asset prices. Currently he is studying the impact of war related events on asset prices as well as the impact of macroeconomic announcements on the stock market and the yield curve. Most of this research is joint work with Brian Sack. They have developed the empirical methodologies to attend the problems of simultaneous equations and errors-in-variables that afflict the data and made impossible the estimation of these questions with standard econometric techniques.

In development economics, he has studied the behavior of the exchange rate when countries implement fiscal reforms, when central banks intervene in the foreign exchange rate market, as well as when there are financial imperfections and capital controls. Currently he us studying the impact of institutions on the income disparities across countries, and also measuring how income levels determine the quality of institutions.

Web Site: http://web.mit.edu/rigobon/www/

Working Papers: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=125012