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B.A. (Honors)

University of Costa Rica (UCR)

B.A. (Honors) in Economics. Enrolled in B.A. in Mathematics.

Production Assistant

Doble Check

Doble Check is a public discourse verification initiative funded by the University of Costa Rica (UCR). Provided economic guidance for the development and publication of fact-checking articles, encompassing public data collection, literature review, and descriptive statistical analysis to assess the accuracy of claims made in public discourse.

Lecturer

Lecturer, Department of Economics (UCR)

Lead Instructor for XE0156 (Introductory Economics for non-majors). Facilitator for EC1100 (Introductory Economics) practice and discussion sessions.

Research Assistant

Do Central Banks Follow the Fed?

Assisted in the construction of a novel dataset leveraging meeting-frequency data on monetary policy rate decisions for 50+ emerging economies, displaying empirical relationships hitherto unobservable in monthly or quarterly frequency data. This new data will contribute in the development of precise monetary policy shock measures for emerging markets.

• Mentor: Alfredo Mendoza-Fernández (Ph.D. Candidate, UC Berkeley)

Research Assistant

Responsible Sourcing? Evidence from Costa Rica

R&R at the American Economic Review. Contribution mainly on ChatGPT-based text analysis, which systematically extracts qualitative and quantitative information from a sample of responsible-sourcing policy documents. Development of a comprehensive replication package encompassing all Stata and Python code used in the paper, fully compliant with the AER's standards for replication packages.

• Mentors: Jose P. Vasquez (LSE) and Isabela Manelici (LSE)

Teaching Assistant

EC2200 - Microeconomic Theory II (University of Costa Rica)

Lecturing on optimization, consumer theory, welfare, producer theory, and general equilibrium models. Design and implementation of practice sets and quizzes.

• Under the supervision of Edgar Robles Cordero (UCR).

The Gap Between Mandate and Execution: An Evaluation of the Inflation Target in Costa Rica

This paper addresses recent concerns about a possible contractionary bias in the policy execution of the Central Bank of Costa Rica (BCCR). I implement three empirical methodologies to measure the implicit long-run expectations anchor, the long-run inflationary trend, and to test for possible asymmetries in the policy response of the BCCR. The results show that the implicit anchor and the long-run inflationary trend are below the official 3% target, while there is statistically significant evidence of an asymmetric policy rule, characterized by a more aggressive reaction to positive inflation deviations relative to negative ones.

Trend Inflation Estimation Using Unobserved Components

Co-authored with Alberth Vargas Miranda (UCR). We implement a state-of-the-art state-space model that fuses realized inflation and long-run inflation expectations to recover the underlying inflationary trend in Costa Rica in order to evaluate the Central Bank's compliance with the target value of 3%. Our estimates reveal a trend that has been consistently below the target, suggesting the presence of an excessively contractionary monetary stance. The next step is to quantify the potential welfare losses associated with these deviations.

Reserve Requirements and Deposits: Evidence From Financial Microdata

Co-authored with Jonathan Garita (Central Bank of Costa Rica and UCR). This study seeks to analyze the effects of Costa Rica's June 2019 reduction and August 2022 reinstatement of domestic-currency reserve requirements on sight and term deposits. We construct a comprehensive anonymized dataset from administrative microdata spanning from 2013 to 2024, which comprises the universe of loan and deposit-level records (of both domestic currency and USD) within the supervised financial system. The next step is to choose an adequate empirical specification to exploit the granularity of the data.

Supply Shocks, Monetary Policy and Foreign Investment: The Costa Rican Case

Awarded Essay at the Latin American Reserve Fund Research Contest. I investigate the implications of global supply disruptions for Latin American economies, with a particular focus on the Costa Rican case. I argue that the interplay between foreign investment attraction strategies, nearshoring, and monetary policy can collectively account for the country's atypical display of accelerated growth and deflation shortly after a supply shock. For such purposes, I adopt a mixed framework by combining a descriptive analysis of macroeconomic indicators and an endogenous New Keynesian Growth Model to reconcile the apparent disconnect between standard business cycles literature and the empirical findings.

First Place Award, Latin American Reserve Fund Research Contest ($5000)

Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR)

Silver Medal

Costa Rican Mathematical Olympiad

Bronze Medal

Costa Rican Mathematical Olympiad

Bronze Medal

Costa Rican Mathematical Olympiad