Macro Faculty | Affiliated Students | External Affiliates
DIRECTORS
Olivier Coibion is the Malcolm Forsman Centennial Professor of Economics at The University of Texas at Austin and co-Director of the Empirical Macroeconomics Policy Center of Texas (EMPCT). He received a BA in Economics and Political Economy from the University of California at Berkeley (1999) and a PhD from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (2007). He works on macroeconomic topics, including monetary policy, how agents form their expectations, inflation measurement, commodity prices, inequality, the efficacy of stimulus payments, and policy communication. Prior to joining UT Austin, Olivier worked at the International Monetary Fund, the Council of Economic Advisers, the Brookings Institution, and the College of William and Mary. He is also affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves as a consultant to a number of central banks.
Nitya Pandalai-Nayar is an Associate Professor of Economics at The University of Texas at Austin and co-Director of the Empirical Macroeconomics Policy Center of Texas (EMPCT). She received a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Wellesley College (2007), an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics (2008) and a PhD from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (2016). She works on topics in international trade and macroeconomics, including the formation of global supply chains and their impact on global synchronization, the transmission of shocks across countries, the adaptation of economies to climate risk, and the employment impacts of trade. Prior to joining UT Austin, Nitya was a post-doctoral affiliate at Princeton. She is also affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves as a consultant to a number of central banks and institutions such as the International Monetary fund and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
STAFF
Sarah Wren is the Senior Administrative Associate for EMPCT. She has a background in administration, project management, and grant writing. Sarah received her BA from The University of Texas with a concentration in medieval history and literature.
MACRO FACULTY
Saroj Bhattarai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at University of Texas at Austin, where he has taught since 2014. He previously taught at Pennsylvania State University from 2010 to 2014. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 2010 and his BA from Williams College in 2005. His research and teaching interests are on monetary and fiscal policy and international macroeconomics and finance. He is currently an Associate Editor of Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. He previously was an Associate Editor of Review of Economics and Statistics. He has been a short- and long-term visitor scholar at several central banks.
Chris’ research focuses on topics in closed and open economy macroeconomics. He is particularly interested in business cycles, monetary policy, fiscal policy, and the cross-country transmission of shocks. Chris received his undergraduate degree from Dresden University of Technology, a MA in economics from Tufts University, a MA in statistics from the University of Michigan, and a PhD from the University of Michigan. He is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Andres Drenik is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He earned his B.A. in Economics from Universidad de San Andrés (Argentina) in 2005 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University in 2016 and, prior to joining UT Austin, he held a position as an Assistant Professor at Columbia University. His research focuses on international finance and macroeconomics, with particular emphasis on emerging economies. His work examines pricing behavior in foreign currency markets, the implications of domestic currency contract choices for optimal monetary policy, and the redistributive effects of exchange rate policies. Recently, Andres has expanded his research into macro-labor economics topics, investigating labor market dynamics following nominal devaluations, the global pricing of remote work, and the impact of wage rigidities on labor market flows.
Oliver is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin since 2024. His research focuses on macroeconomics, in particular on the role of expectations and household heterogeneity for the transmission of shocks and the effectiveness and design of policy, especially monetary policy. Oliver received his Ph.D. in 2023 from the University of Mannheim.
AFFILIATED STUDENTS
Minseog Kim is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, with a research focus on the intersection of macroeconomics and corporate finance. His research addresses questions such as how firms’ debt maturity schedules influence product pricing behaviors and how the opioid epidemic affects firms’ recruiting behaviors and individuals’ workplace choices. Prior to his doctoral studies, he worked as a junior economist at the Bank of Korea. Minseog holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.A. in Economics from Yonsei University in South Korea.
Alejandro Parraguez is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. He received a BA in Economics and an MA at the University of Chicago (2016,2017) and prior to UT he worked as a research fellow at the Inter-American Development Bank. His research lies at the intersection of macroeconomics, trade and spatial economics with a particular interest in using microdata to explore macro-level questions, such as the propagation of regional shocks and productivity growth.
Edson Wu is a PhD candidate in Economics at The University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics. His research focuses on how agents form expectations and the role these expectations play in propagating economic shocks. Before pursuing his doctoral studies, he worked as an economist in asset management. Edson holds a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from Fundação Getulio Vargas, Brazil.
EXTERNAL AFFILIATES
Julia Coronado is President and Founder of the economic research firm MacroPolicy Perspectives and a Clinical Associate Professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas Austin. Julia received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Texas then served as an economist at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington DC for eight years forecasting the US economy and publishing scholarly articles on pension finances and market valuations, retirement saving, and digital currency and monetary policy. Before founding MacroPolicy Perspectives Julia served as Chief Economist for the global investment bank BNP Paribas and asset manager Graham Capital. She is past President and current Board member of the National Association of Business Economists, and currently serves as lead independent director for the board of Dynex Capital as well as an independent director for Robert Half International. Julia is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Dallas Federal Reserve, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Cleveland Fed’s Center for Inflation Research. She is a regular commentator in the financial press.
Karel Mertens is director of research and senior vice president in charge of the Statistics Department.
He is responsible for leading the Dallas Fed’s effort to grow research thought leadership, advise on matters related to monetary policy, and guide Statistics Department efforts to collect and analyze data from across the Eleventh Federal Reserve District to better inform monetary policy and economic research.His research interests include business cycles, fiscal policy, banking and monetary economics, empirical macroeconomics and time series econometrics. His recent work focuses on the macroeconomic effects of fiscal and credit policies.
Mertens is a research fellow at the Center of Economic Policy Research and a former research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Prior to joining the Bank in 2017, he was an associate professor of economics at Cornell University.Mertens is a native of Belgium and holds a Licentiaat in economics from Ghent University, an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics and a PhD in economics from the European University Institute.
Kei-Mu Yi is the M.D. Anderson Professor of Economics at the University of Houston and Senior Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. He is also a Research Associate with the International Trade and Investment, and International Finance and Macroeconomics programs at the NBER. In the past, he held positions at the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis, and at Rice University.
His research has been published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and the leading journals in macroeconomics and international economics. His current research is on firm and industry-level structural change in an open economy, and the implications of global value chains for international trade, growth, and inequality.
He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.
