Congratulations to Dr Federica Romei who was awarded the prestigious and highly competitive ERC Starting grant worth over €1,000,000 in December 2021.
Dr Romei’s research project Heterogeneous Agents in Heterogeneous Countries explores interlinked phenomena that came to shape economics in the past three decades: the evolution of inequality within and across countries, the explosion of international capital flows after financial liberalisation, and the secular decline of real interest rates. Her research is a theoretical and empirical enquiry on how heterogeneity interacts with aggregate macroeconomic variables, such as the current account balance, gross domestic product and real interest rates. This pioneering research pushes the frontiers of macroeconomic research by developing quantitative international macroeconomic models with heterogeneous agents. Through these models, she analyses the interaction between within- and across-country heterogeneity. Her research will have a substantial impact on both academic studies of macroeconomics and the policy agenda.
‘I am honoured to receive the ERC Starting grant. I am excited to start working soon on my research agenda about heterogeneity in international macroeconomics. I am very grateful for the opportunities that this grant will open up. Thanks to these resources, we will make great progress on our understanding of the consequences of inequality in open economies’.
Federica Romei
Federica joined the University of Oxford in 2018 after a track record of academic and policy research in macroeconomics at the Stockholm School of Economics, Banco de España, Centre for Economic Policy Research, and European University Institute. Her previous research focused on monetary economics, fiscal policy and international economics, particularly analysing policies in response to debt deleveraging shocks and the role of heterogeneity in the transmission of foreign shocks.
