Andres Blanco
Research Economist and Associate Advisor Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
Visiting professor at Emory University
Office: Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
1000 Peachtree Street, NE
9th Floor, Room 9.380
Atlanta, GA, 30309
Phone: 404-498-7986
Email: julioablanco84@gmail.com
I am a macroeconomist working on the aggregate implications of frictions at the micro-level. My research agenda aims to answer policy-relevant questions by providing measurements of new facts, developing theories, and testing their quantitative relevance. I study: (i) the role of price-setting for inflation dynamics and monetary policy, (ii) the role of inflation in labor markets, and (iii) the role of investment frictions for aggregate capital dynamics and macroeconomic outcomes.
Working papers
Nominal Devaluations, Inflation, and Inequality (with Andres Drenik and Emilio Zaratiegui, first draft: February 2019) R&R at AEJmacro
Across countries, inequality falls after large devaluations within the context of a surge of inflation. Using a novel administrative dataset covering the 2002 Argentinean devaluation, we show how labor mobility and lack of union coverage of high-income workers account for the drop in inequality.
The Macroeconomics of Partial Irreversibility (with Isaac Baley, first draft: October 2020) R&R at Review of Economic Studies
We investigate the macroeconomic effects of partially irreversible investment arising from a wedge between the buying and selling price of capital and apply the theory to study corporate tax reforms. Corporate income tax cuts improve the allocation of capital, decrease aggregate Tobin's q, and slow down capital fluctuations.
A Theory of Labor Markets with Inefficient Turnover (with Andres Drenik, Christian Moser, and Emilio Zaratiegui, first draft: June 2022)
We develop a theory of quits and layoffs with search frictions, idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks, sticky wages, and two-sided lack of commitment.
The Dynamics of Large Inflation Surges (with Pablo Ottonello and Tereza Ranosova, first draft: October 2022) R&R at Review of Economic and Statistics
We empirically characterize episodes of large inflation surges over inflation, short-run inflation expectations, long-run inflation expectations, and fiscal and monetary policies. Our findings highlight the challenges monetary authorities face in avoiding persistent inflation dynamics following large inflation surges.
Nonlinear Inflation Dynamics in Menu Cost Economies (with Corina Boar, Callum Jones, and Virgiliu Midrigan, first draft: December 2022)
We show that canonical menu cost models cannot reproduce the extent to which the fraction of price changes increases with inflation. We resolve it by extending the standard multi-product menu cost model along two dimensions: strategic complementarities are at the firm level, and products a firm sells are imperfect substitutes.
How Does Inflation "Grease the Wheels" in a Frictional Labor Market? (with Andres Drenik, first draft: July 2023)
We unify a theory of frictional labor markets with a theory of nominal wage adjustment. The model features worker heterogeneity, endogenous quits and layoffs, on-the-job search, and on-the-job wage renegotiation. We parametrize the model to match important features of the wage change distribution in micro data and use it to reproduce the anatomy of labor market during Argentina's 2001 inflation episode.
Views are my own and do not necessarily reflects those of the Board of Governors or the Federal Reserve System