Junior Research Fellow Alistair Macaulay has won the sought-after Marjolin Prize for the best paper presented by an economist under 40 at a well-respected international colloquium.
Alistair’s paper was selected by a committee of six senior academics and central bankers at the annual colloquium of influential network association, SUERF - The European Money and Finance Forum.
The paper, ‘Heterogeneous information, subjective model beliefs, and the time-varying transmission of shocks’, was around how heterogeneity in expectations, particularly in relation to inflation, could affect the dynamics of the macroeconomy.
Committee member Ernest Gnan, of the Austrian National Bank, praised Alistair’s paper for its ‘innovative choice of topic, the excellent technical execution of the paper…and the very high policy relevance of the findings.’
Quality of papers
Alistair commented: ‘I’m thrilled to win. The quality of papers at the colloquium was very high, so to be selected from that pool is amazing. A lot of work has gone into the paper, and while there is still lots more to do, I’m very happy to have it recognised in this way.’
He said the idea for the prize-winning paper came while he was a DPhil student at the Department of Economics, and that conversations with members of the Department have been ‘instrumental in improving the work at every step of the process’.
Although the prize was for his solo-authored paper, Alistair explained that it was part of a broader research agenda on heterogeneity in expectations: ‘Working with DPhil student James Moberly on our related paper, “Heterogeneity in imperfect inflation expectations: theory and evidence from a novel survey”, has also helped advance my thinking on the prize-winning work.’
James presented on the paper at the SUERF Colloquium and it is available as a Department of Economics Discussion Paper: https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/publication/1251675/hyrax.
Alistair acknowledged help from all members of the macroeconomics group at the Department of Economics and extended special thanks to Professors of Economics Martin Ellison and Michael McMahon, ‘who have devoted lots of time to guiding my research, and have been instrumental in my research career to date.’
The winning research will be Alistair’s job market paper for the Academic Job Market in 2022/2023.
