Welcome to my website!  I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago's department of Economics and will be on the 2023-24 job market.  

My main area of interest is International Economics, with a focus on Labor. In particular, I use data and theory to understand the economic effects of commodity booms and the role of the dollar in both finance and trade.

If you'd like to reach out, please contact me at soramarcos@uchicago.edu.




Working papers

Macroprudential policy for internal financial dollarization (with Aleksei Oskolkov).  

Resubmitted at the Journal of International Economics.

Arguments for taxes on foreign currency debt have been based on settings in which domestic firms in an emerging country borrow only from foreign investors in dollars. However, dollarization can arise as domestic firms insure domestic households by borrowing from them in dollars. We revisit the arguments for prudential policy in this empirically relevant setting in which saver's welfare is also taken into account.


Work in progress

Labor reallocation during commodity booms: The role of uncertainty.

I analyze labor market outcomes during a commodity boom, focusing on the role of uncertainty about the duration of the boom in driving those outcomes. I build a quantitative model in which sector specific human capital and migration costs make workers forward looking and estimate it using novel administrative data from Australia, an exporter of mineral products, between 2011-2019. I estimate the expected duration of the boom using data on the value of stocks and options of one of the leading mining firms. The key counterfactual question is how wages and labor shares between sectors would have been different if the duration of the shock had been known.


Banks and the geography of capital within borders (with Olivia Bordeu and Gustavo González).  

We introduce banks into an otherwise standard quantitative spatial model. Assuming that agents must use bank branches in their city for saving and borrowing, the model predicts that the cost of capital differs between cities.  This mechanism can have quantitatively important implications for the  missallocation of capital at the national level and how the economy responds to geographically localized shocks. 

Presented: UEA European Meetings 2023, Warwick PhD Conference 2023.

Trade and financial dollarization: Theory and firm-level evidence (with Aleksei Oskolkov).  

We study the currency invoicing decision of Peruvian exporters during a period of de-dollarization of the national financial system. Between 1993 and 2007 the macroeconomy stabilized and the uncovered interest parity, the premium on local currency debt, fell. We study how exportes responded to the change in the relative price of debt in different currencies by shifting the currency in which they invoiced their exports, which sheds light on the link between roles that the dollar plays globally in finance and trade. Differential debt requirements by sector allows us to isolate the effect of this mechanism.

Teaching 

PhD:

TA for Price Theory I (Profs. Kevin Murphy and Casey Mulligan) in 2021.

TA for Price Theory III (Prof. Lars Stole) in 2020 and 2021.

Executive MBA (Booth):

TA for Microeconomics (Prof. Lars Stole) in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Student reviews by year: 4.48/5; 4.57/5; 4.55/5.

TA for Global Strategy and Economics (Prof. Guido Lorenzoni) in 2023. Student reviews: 4.45/5.

MBA (Booth):

TA for Avanced Microeconomics (Prof. Kevin Murphy) in 2019.

TA for Managing the Firm in the Global Economy (Prof. Jonathan Dingel) in 2021.

TA for Business in Historical Perspective (Prof. Richard Hornbeck) in 2022.

College:

TA for Economics 201 (Lecturers Rafael Jimenez and German Villegas Bauer) in 2020.