A Stone Centre success story: Filippo Pallotti

We are proud to announce that Filippo Pallotti has recently completed his Stone Centre-funded research and branched out into a new sector to expand his economic expertise.

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Please share a brief outline of your PhD research and your interest in economics.

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My research agenda sits broadly within the field of incorporating many crucial aspects of household heterogeneity within macroeconomics. In particular, I have a set of papers that illustrate the remarkably different distributional impacts of the latest inflationary shock, both in the United States and in the Euro Area. In the case of the U.S., I show that these differential impacts of unexpected inflation on creditors and debtors have been arguably one of the main reasons for the remarkable strength of the U.S. economy post-pandemic, as households who have seen the real value of their debt eroded by unexpected inflation had a high marginal propensity to consume. A large part of my PhD has also been devoted to exploring alternative real-time datasets from credit and debit card transactions, often with billions of observations, where I got support from the Stone Centre through a grant with Professor Stephen Hansen. I am currently using those data to uncover new insights on policy transmission and households' behaviour.  

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‍Why did you apply for a Stone Centre scholarship, and how does your research agenda connect to the Stone Centre’s mission?

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Given my interests in the distributional aspects of macroeconomics, the Stone Centre felt a natural home for my research agenda. I was privileged to interact with many great researchers there, not necessarily macroeconomists but nevertheless very interested in some aspects of my work, as well as to learn from their own great research and experience. Their financial support enabled me to focus all my efforts on advancing my projects and maximise the impact they could have on academia and policy discussions. It also allowed me to access unique alternative data on card transactions which I used in two working papers, hopefully setting the stage for many others down the line.

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How has support from the Stone Centre helped you plan your next career move? What do you hope to do in the future?

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I recently transitioned into the financial sector, using state-of-the-art quantitative tools to model advanced economies, although I am still keeping active ties with the whole research community, which is greatly helping me in my professional career as well. The Stone Centre network will always be a source of inspiration, insights, and relationships to bring forward my research agenda as well as my broader career path.

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We wish Filippo all the best for the future. To find out more, take a look at a research summary from Filippo on the Stone Centre website: High frequency data for heterogeneity in macro and visit Filippo’s website here.