Research

Work In Progress

  • Welfare Effects of Dollar Currency Invoicing: The Case of Durable Goods

    How does dollar pricing of durable goods affect household welfare in small open economies? This project extends a canonical lumpy adjustment framework by adding exchange-rate exposure at the moment of durable replacement. The model generates a new friction: some households delay adjustment because exchange-rate risk raises the effective replacement threshold. I discipline the model with moments from a dual-currency economy and quantify the welfare effects across household types.

  • Chinese New Year, Culture, and Dynamics: The Case of Cherry Picking
    with Magdalena Martin

    This project studies how cultural and seasonal shocks shape intertemporal behavior. We focus on cherry-picking dynamics around Chinese New Year and analyze how preferences, timing constraints, and short-run market conditions interact to generate measurable changes in selection behavior.

Publications

  • Policies for transactional de-dollarization: A laboratory study
    With David Florian, Kristian López Vargas, and Valeria Morales Vasquez
    Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol 200, August 2022.

    Abstract.- This study examines de-dollarization policies in small open economies, focusing on two key interventions: taxing domestic transactions in foreign currency and reducing the storage cost of local currency.

    Building on Matsuyama et al. (1993) and experiments, the research identifies a new regime where foreign currency is used only for international trade, while local currency dominates domestic transactions. The findings suggest that both policies effectively promote de-dollarization by reducing foreign currency usage and reinforcing local currency adoption.

    De-dollarization Study

Policy Articles (Spanish)