This thesis explores the economics of corporate investment and investigates how problems of asymmetric information and strategic interaction influence the efficiency of investment behavior. I present theoretical work and empirical results from a survey of European chief financial executives.

Unconventional fiscal policies incentivize households to accelerate consumption by generating future consumer price ination, and offer an alternative to unconventional monetary policy (Correia et al. (2013)). We use a natural experiment to study the causal effect of unconventional fiscal...

Communication targeting households and firms has become a stand-alone policy tool of many central banks. But which forms of communication, if any, can reach ordinary people and manage their economic expectations effectively? In a large-scale randomized control trial, we show that communication...

Many consumers below the top of the distribution of a representative population by cognitive abilities barely react to monetary and fiscal policies that aim to stimulate consumption and borrowing, even when they are financially unconstrained and despite substantial debt capacity. Differences in...

We study how researchers can apply machine learning (ML) methods in finance. We first establish that the two major categories of ML (supervised and unsupervised learning) address fundamentally different problems than traditional econometric approaches. Then, we review the current state of...

Unique administrative data on a representative population's cognitive abilities, spending, and financials reveal that consumers at or below median cognitive abilities barely react when their incentives to spend or borrow change, even if they earn high incomes and are financially unconstrained...

We study how researchers can apply machine learning (ML) methods in finance. We first establish that the two major categories of ML (supervised and unsupervised learning) address fundamentally different problems than traditional econometric approaches. Then, we review the current state of...

Unconventional fiscal policy uses announcements of future increases in consumption taxes to generate inflation expectations and accelerate consumption expenditure. It is budget neutral and time consistent. We provide preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of such policies using changes in...

Macroeconomists often prefer monetary policy to fiscal policy as a tool to stabilize business cycles. Fiscal policy is typically only effective with a lag, and results in permanent deficits with higher nominal interest rates and distortionary taxes. In addition, a high marginal propensity to...