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.

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.

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.