I am an economist interested in firm dyanamics and their relevance for aggregate economic questions. My research is in the fields of macroeconomics, international trade and entrepreneurship. I received my PhD from NYU in 2018 and am currently a Research Economist at the Bank of Portugal and a member of the Business and Economics Research Unit at Católica-Lisbon.

Publications

On the Cleansing Effect of Recessions and Government Policy: Evidence from Covid-19 (with Pedro Moreira and Cezar Santos)
European Economic Review, 2022, 144:104097

Covid-19 had a cleansing effect on the intensive margin, with higher-productivity firms being more successful at maintaining employment. But the exit rate of low productivity firms did not increase, and government support disproportionately went to these firms.

What are Uncertainty Shocks? (with Anna Orlik and Laura Veldkamp)
Journal of Monetary Economics, 2018, 100:1–15
Ungated version | VoxEU article

Macro volatility on its own can generate realistic fluctuations in a range of commonly used, and seemingly distinct, uncertainty measures: micro dispersion (cross-sectional variance of firm-level outcomes), higher-order uncertainty (disagreement) and macro uncertainty (uncertainty about macro outcomes).

Working papers

What's Driving the Decline in Entrepreneurship?
June 2024
Under revision at Journal of Monetary Economics
Appendix

This paper documents new facts about the decline in entrepreneurship in the US and interprets them with an occupational choice model. Skill-biased technical change can account for much of the decline in the relative entrepreneurship rate of more educated people, but cannot explain the decline in the aggregate level of entrepreneurship. The major factors driving the aggregate changes are rising entry costs and outsized productivity gains by large non-entrepreneur firms.

Demand Learning, Customer Capital and Exporter Dynamics (with Spencer Lyon)
November 2023

Trade costs are critical for understanding the gains from trade. We reassess these taking into account firm dynamics driven by customer accumulation and information frictions, and reassess the gains from trade.

Work in progress

Fighting Income Inequality with International Trade (with Victor Hernandez Martinez and Roman Merga)

Financial Frictions and Firm Support (with Miguel Faria-e-Castro and Nuno Paixão)

Firm financing (with Miguel H. Ferreira)