How money, financial systems and policy shape economic activity, and how we measure the forces beneath the surface.
The same financial shock can produce very different economic outcomes. Understanding why means looking beneath aggregate indicators at the monetary arrangements, financial institutions and policy choices that connect markets with economic activity. That connection sits at the center of my work in global macroeconomics.
Measurement is part of the question. Research on economic slack in the eurozone examines how we assess an economy's room to grow. Work on derivatives, bank loan quality and exchange rate valuation explores the financial channels through which risks and incentives take shape. Analysis of Japan adds a perspective on monetary policy and its international setting.
Together, these strands ask how the architecture of finance influences economic adjustment. This page connects academic research, institutional analysis and public discussion so readers can follow an idea across different methods, markets and moments, and return to the original evidence.
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Fortun links the slowdown in emerging-market portfolio inflows to weaker currencies, expectations of earlier Federal Reserve tightening and concern over a new coronavirus variant.
View detailsTurkey’s November 2021 currency selloff resembled the 2018 crisis in scale but occurred with a stronger external balance. Robin Brooks, Jonathan Fortun and Ugras Ulku attribute the pressure to continued rate cuts, changing market psychology and the reversal of speculative inflows. They interpret the fall as overshooting and retain their contemporary fair value estimate of 9.50 lira per dollar.
Read the workThe safe haven role of US Treasuries depends partly on the durability of foreign demand. Robin Brooks, Jonathan Fortun and Jonathan Pingle argue in November 2021 that dollar strength reduced foreign central banks’ need to intervene and accumulate Treasury holdings. Persistently weak inflows could leave the market more exposed to global shocks and require renewed Federal Reserve support.
Read the workThe authors examine how central-bank asset purchases can suppress sovereign yields and obscure fiscal constraints, focusing on the euro area's policy-normalization risks.
Read the workFortun discusses how tighter policy conditions weighed on emerging-market equities while portfolio inflows slowed in October.
View detailsExceptionally long delivery times and large price increases in the United States pointed to strong demand as well as supply constraints in October 2021. Robin Brooks, Jonathan Fortun and Jonathan Pingle connect this pattern to unusually large fiscal support. They interpret the disruption as evidence of overheating and retain a 2022 core inflation forecast above the Federal Reserve’s projection at the time.
Read the workThe report reviews large, sustained real currency depreciations since 1980 and their relationship with export volumes, imports and current-account adjustment.
Read the workFortun connects foreign selling of Turkish debt to uncertainty over the lira and rising perceptions of risk after the central bank began cutting interest rates. Reuters also examines how the policy shift interrupted an earlier recovery in foreign equity flows.
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