Student Research

Research areas I work on or advise

Monetary policy

Monetary policy is one of the means by which government authorities in a market economy influence the pace and direction of overall economic activity. Important development in research in recent decades have revolved around the choice of a short-term interest rate versus a reserve quantity as the central bank's direct operating instrument, whether to use some measure of money as an intermediate target, whether to constrain the central bank to follow some fairly simple policy rule, what degree of political independence a central bank should have, and whether to target inflation.

YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SpIaGTq0u8&t=85s)

Cryptocurrencies

Digital currencies (DC) have enjoyed a drastic increase in popularity in recent years. Bitcoin, ICO and blockchain are now words familiar to anyone. Yet there are a great prospectives for a research. How government policies should be changed in presence of digital currencies? Can economy exist on DC alone and how would it be transformed? Do Central bank’s DC have a future? All these questions and many others are of a great interest now and provide a variety of research opportunities.

Review article(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhdM4_iRHyE)

Financial stability

Financial stability is a state in which the financial system is resistant to economic shocks and is fit to smoothly fulfil its basic functions: the intermediation of financial funds, management of risks and the arrangement of payments. The relevance of analyses on financial stability was first recognised during the international financial crises at the end of the 90s, also greatly strengthened by the financial and economic crisis emerging in 2007 after which financial stability has established as one of the most widely discussed issues in today’s economic literature.

Review article (https://www.mnb.hu/en/financial-stability/defining-financial-stability), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYGkd2jQ_hs)

Capital flows

The dramatic increase in international capital flows, despite a temporary contraction during the global crisis, has motivated policy discussions on the associated benefits and costs of capital mobility. While international capital movements can support long-term growth, they also pose short-term policy challenges, including those associated with undesirable consequences of exchange-rate appreciation, financial and asset-price cycles and sudden stops in capital flows. Countries have dealt with such challenges by means of macro- and micro-prudential measures, tax instruments and direct capital controls. While some restrictive measures may be effective in the short run, they also entail risks, including those related to retaliatory measures by other countries and a progressive fragmentation of international capital markets.

Review article (https://www.oecd.org/economy/48972216.pdf), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SvegL-hpaM)

Sovereign default

A sovereign default is the failure or refusal of the government to pay back its debt in full. Since a sovereigngovernment, by definition, controls its own affairs, it cannot be obliged to pay back its debt. There are several causes for defaults including a reversal of global capital flows, excessive foreign debts and rising interest rates. Often a default is accompanied with a financial crisis. How to avoid such defaults, mitigate the consequences and recover after them and which policies to implement are questions without certain answers. With Greece in 2015 becoming the first developed country to default to the International Monetary Fund these questions are of increasing interest for economists.

Review article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_default), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn7eqhu4HeQ&t=26s&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Financial crises

A financial crisis is often defined as any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. There are many theories about causes and consequences of crises how they could be prevented. There is no consensus, however, and financial crises continue to occur from time to time. The 2008 financial crisis which is believed to be the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression has raised a great variety of questions that are not completely answered yet. The main is if there is threat of another crisis, can it beanticipated and eliminated.

Review article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScMLpqOvyVQ&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Growth, Development and emerging markets

Why some countries are more developed than others? How to encourage growth of developing and undeveloped economies? What exactly does it mean for economy ‘to develop’ and ‘to grow’? These questions do not lie in a prospect of monetary economics as most others in the list. However, they are of a great interest too. Emerging markets in Asia and Africa are believed to have a huge potential and thus these countries need to be studied properly and provide a wide variety of topics for research.

YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7igTrNPOW4&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Online markets

With Jeff Bezos breaking a historical record becoming the ‘wealthiest person in modern history’ online markets reaches a new peak of evolution. Do online markets follow rules of economic theory? How can prices adjustments be explained? Will offline retail survive in the future and/or how will it modify? All this questions were raised not a long time ago and still have to be answered and developed by economists.

Review article (http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/140%20erikb,%20digital%20markets.pdf)

Some Economists working on related issues

Kenneth Arrow

Winner of the 1972 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His most significant works are his significant contribution to social choice theory and his work on general equilibrium analysis.

‘Existence of an Equilibrium for a Competitive Economy’ (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1907353?origin=crossref&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents), Wiki-page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arrow#Publications), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHBZCSss3oM&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Olivier Blanchard

One of the most cited economists in the world, according to IDEAS/RePEc. He was the chief economistat the International Monetary Fund, from 2008to 2015. Author of numerous undergraduate and graduate macroeconomic textbooks including one used in ICEF years 2 and 3.

Home Page (https://economics.mit.edu/faculty/blanchar), 'Bubbles, Rational Expectations and Financial Markets’ (http://www.nber.org/papers/w0945), Wiki-page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Blanchard), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zndOEQnMC44&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Claudio Borio

Head of the Monetary and Economic Department in Bank for International Settlements since 2013. Author of numerous publications in the fields of monetary policy, banking, finance and issues related to financial stability.

‘Monetary and Financial Stability: So Close and Yet So Far?’ (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002795010519200109?journalCode=nera), BIS page (https://www.bis.org/author/claudio_borio.htm), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzyZ8C1VPMA&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Varadarajan Chari

Professorof economics at the University of Minnesota. His research interests are in banking, fiscal and monetary policy and in issues of economic development. He has written extensively on banking crises, exchange rate fluctuations and international capital flows.

‘Banking Panics, Information, and Rational Expectations Equilibrium’ (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-6261.1988.tb04606.x), UM page (https://apps.cla.umn.edu/directory/profiles/chari002), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTjg-4dUUXA&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Irving Fisher

Was described as "the greatest economist the United States has ever produced’ by J. Schumpeter, J. Tobin and M. Friedman. Made an important contributions to utility theory and general equilibrium.

‘The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions’ (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1907327?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents), Wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Fisher)

Milton Friedman

Received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and the complexity of stabilization policy

'The Role of Monetary Policy’ (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1831652), Wiki-page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THAaIZmxfNA&frags=pl%2Cwn)

John Geanakoplos

Professor of Economics at Yale University. Made an important contribution to General equilibrium theory, particularly Incomplete markets in general equilibrium theory. Since the onset of the Late-2000s financial crisis, has been working on the relationship between leverage and asset prices in context of discussions of financial market fluctuations and regulation.

Home Page (https://economics.yale.edu/people/john-geanakoplos), 'The Leverage Cycle’ (http://www.nber.org/chapters/c11786), Wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Geanakoplos), YouTube playlist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTs2IQ8OefQ&list=PLEDC55106E0BA18FC)

Charles Goodhart

Director of the Financial Regulation Research Programme in LSE. Greatly contributed to analysis of Central bank’s policies and debt. Author of the Goodhart’s law which can be simplified to a statement that any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.

Home Page (http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchandexpertise/experts/profile.aspx?KeyValue=c.a.goodhart%40lse.ac.uk),"Problems of Monetary Management: The U.K. Experience" (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-17295-5_4), Wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Goodhart), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2td7zubK8-s&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Friedrich Hayek

Received the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his "pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and ... penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena’’.

‘Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle’ (https://jgm42mbgf05.storage.googleapis.com/MTYxNDI3MzI3OA==05.pdf), Wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek)

Anil Kashyap

Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Kashyap’s research focuses on banking, price setting, the Japanese economy, monetary policy, financial intermediation and regulation.

Home Page (http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/anil.kashyap/), 'What Do a Million Observations on Banks Say about the Transmission of Monetary Policy?’ (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.90.3.407), Wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Kashyap), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXa385H3sAU&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Timothy Kehoe

Professorof Economics at the University of Minnesota. Conduct a research in trade theory, capital flows and real exchange rates and general equilibrium theory.

‘Debt-Constrained Asset Markets’ (https://academic.oup.com/restud/article-abstract/60/4/865/1573131), Website (http://users.econ.umn.edu/~tkehoe/research.html), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViT69ZmRQh0&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Robert Lucas Jr.

Received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1995 "for having developed and applied the hypothesis of rational expectations, and thereby having transformed macroeconomic analysis and deepened understanding of economic policy’’.

Home Page (http://home.uchicago.edu/~relucas/), 'Expectations and the neutrality of money’ (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022053172901421?via%3Dihub), Wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lucas_Jr.), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak72MbeYPl0&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Herakles Polemarchakis

Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics of the University of Warwick. He has made major contribution to Economic Theory, and in particular General Equilibrium theory with Incomplete Markets. He works in economic theory and, in particular, on the theory of economic policy.

'Existence, regularity, and constrained suboptimality of competitive allocations when the asset market is incomplete’ (https://books.google.ru/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XUY1LyZwC8UC&oi=fnd&pg=PA65&dq=info:QqLTI6vECMMJ:scholar.google.com&ots=Ho-kN2IXy1&sig=h2shuwHtIul8vMIOeAGLGwa60qE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false), Website (http://www.polemarchakis.org), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGh00enL-ic&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Edward Prescott

Received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2004 "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles’’.

Home Page (https://wpcarey.asu.edu/people/profile/667634), 'The Equity Premium in Retrospect’ (http://www.nber.org/papers/w9525), Wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Prescott), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ5WgkROwig&frags=pl%2Cwn)

Paul Samuelson

Won the 1970 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for the scientific work through which he has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science’’.

‘Foundations of Economic Analysis’ (https://philpapers.org/rec/SAMFOE), Wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Samuelson)

Jeremy Stein

Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Stein was president of theAmerican Finance Associationin 2008, and a member of the Board of Governorsof the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2012 to 2014. Stein’s research has covered such topics as: behavioral finance and market efficiency; corporate investment and financing decisions; risk management; capital allocation inside firms; banking; financial regulation; and monetary policy.

‘Monetary Policy and Credit Conditions: Evidence From the Composition of External Finance’ (http://www.nber.org/papers/w4015), Webpage (https://scholar.harvard.edu/stein/home), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdfYzeRoyAw&frags=pl%2Cwn)

James Tobin

Received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciencesin 1981 "for his analysis of financial marketsand their relations to expenditure decisions, employment, production and prices». Tobin was widely known, even outside academia, for his suggestion of a taxon foreign exchangetransactions, now known as the "Tobin tax". This was designed to reduce speculation in the international currency markets, which he saw as dangerous and unproductive.

‘A General Equilibrium Approach To Monetary Theory’ (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1991374?origin=crossref), Wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tobin)

Dimitrios Tsomocos

Professor of Financial Economics at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Main areas of expertise include banking and regulation, incomplete asset markets, systemic risk, financial instability, and issues of new financial architecture. He co-developed the Goodhart – Tsomocos model of financial fragility in 2003 while working at the Bank of England.

‘Global Imbalances and Taxing Capital Flows’ (http://eureka.sbs.ox.ac.uk/4803/), Oxford page (https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/community/people/dimitrios-tsomocos), Personal Page (http://www.tsomocos.org), YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn7eqhu4HeQ&frags=pl%2Cwn)


How I advise and what to do

  • Students contact me by email (upeiris@hse.ru) sending me their CV, describing their grades in the previous year and their research interests and experience

  • A meeting is scheduled to understand if I am a fit to their interests.

  • There are 8 regular group meetings during Term 1 and Term 2. Each student will present twice each term.

    • The first presentation will present a collection of broad ideas and themes.

    • The second presentation will develop one of the themes and show literature and methodology

    • The third presentation will show some initial results

    • The final presentation will show developed results

  • There will be an additional meeting in May when all the students will present their completed work.

  • The schedule above means that all dissertations and courseworks will start in early September most of the dissertation will be completed by mid May

  • I use the app 'Slack' to communicate with students, 'Asana' to set tasks, electronic calendars to set appointments, 'dropbox' for file storage and 'zotero' for reference management. All students will need to be comfortable and use these software.


Qualities of Students I advise

  • The students I advise require, above all else, a strong desire and commitment to satisfy their own curiosity, develop skills and are committed to working extremely hard.

  • Students should not be solely motivated by: a) grades, b) reference letters, or c) the value a successful dissertation will bring to them.

  • Usually students that have the qualities in the first bullet point obtain the benefits listed in the second.

  • I strongly prefer NOT to accept students in their final year of study. I prefer to have them as students from the 2nd or 3rd year of BSc or 1st year of MSc and work with them for several years. This is important as it gives time for both training and developing understanding of themes and intuition.


Graduating Students Advised, Dissertations, Grades and Placements

  • Click name for dissertation. Asterisk (*) denotes a final grade of 5/5.

  • 2019-20

    • BSc (final year): Arkadiy Vornkin* (2020-21: MSc ESSEC), Meylis Orazov* (2020-21: MSc ICEF), Shuana Pirbudagova* (2020-21: MA NES), Yana Khassan* (2020-21: MSc HSE/SKOLTECH)

  • 2018-19

    • BSc (final year): Saveliy Lezhnev* (2019-20: MSc LSE), Igor Baranov*, Elen Harutyunyan, Ivan Gach (Industry)

  • 2017-18

    • MSc (final year): Bekzod Rakhimov (Industry), Aleksandr Shirobokov* (2018-19: PhD, HSE), Anna Stekolshchikova (Industry)

    • BSc (final year): Anton Kalinin* (2018-19: MSc LSE), Elina Khovrenkova (2018-19: MSc Imperial), Jana Izgarsheva* (2018-19: MSc LBS), Lev Vanchev (2018-19: MSc, NES)

  • 2016-17

  • 2015-16

  • 2014-15

  • 2013-14

    • MSc (final year): Vadim Kanofyev* (2013-15: PhD Pennsylvania)

    • BSc (final year): Anton Fokin (Industry)