Roberto Rigobon areas of research are international economics, monetary economics, and development economics. In international economics, Roberto focuses on the causes of balance-of-payments crises, financial crises, and the propagation of them across countries - the phenomenon that has been identified in the literature as contagion. He has developed econometric techniques to determine the existence of contagion and the extent of it. Currently he is working with Anna Pavlova to develop theoretical models of multiple assets in general equilibrium to study the interaction between terms of trade, stock markets, exchange rates, and financial constraints. He is also working with Gita Gopinath in a series of papers understanding firm’s international pricing practices.
In monetary economics, he studies the behavior of financial markets and
their interaction with monetary policy. In particular, his two most recent
papers in the area study: (i) how the Federal Reserve
in the
In development economics, he has studied the behavior of the exchange rate when countries implement fiscal reforms, when central banks intervene in the foreign exchange rate market, as well as when there are financial imperfections and capital controls. Currently he us studying the impact of institutions on the income disparities across countries, and also measuring how income levels determine the quality of institutions.
Roberto is currently an associate professor at the Sloan School of
Management, MIT, a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic
Research, and a visiting professor at IESA. He joined the business school in
1997 and has won three times the "Teacher of the year" award and
three times the "Excellence in Teaching" award at MIT. He got his
Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1997, an MBA from IESA (