Flight delays are costly to passengers, the air travel industry, businesses, and the overall economy. Yet, there is little empirical evidence on how passengers behave and spend their time as a result of given time due to schedule disruptions. In this study, we use a large proprietary dataset on passengers’ indoor movements from a major airport and publicly available flight delay data to study how flyers spend their time due to flight delays.

With local and international pressures, there is race towards benchmarking palm oil against local and global sustainability standards. Amidst record-low prices and restrictive export criteria how does it affect the Independent Small Holder farmer for Oil Palm contributing most upstream in the palm oil supply chain? The risk of being the first one to be culled out in the name of sustainability is real. How do we enable ethical and responsible sourcing while safeguarding the interest of some of the many small players in the supply chain who may live day to day on a mere subsistence level and are furthest away from any endorsement to sustainability.

WHEN I’M 64:WHAT DO NEW ZEALANDERS WANT IN A RETIREMENT INCOME POLICY?

In this paper we describe how multi-criteria decision analysis was used to investigate the preferences of a nationally representative sample of New Zealanders with respect to retirement income policies. Using the estimates of individual preferences over seven different aspects of retirement income policy, we find that a policy which raises taxes to prefund the government retirement income scheme is supported by a majority of people of all ages and income groups. Our results suggest that multi-criteria decision has considerable potential in helping policy makers identify and develop policies that are aligned with people’s preferences.

This project connects environmental problems with fields of economics and finance, by highlighting how climate change policy affects the economy through the banking channel. Financial instability arises from: (i) environmental policy affects entrepreneurs’ profitability and firms’ liquidity; (ii) banks price climate change risk by charging higher lending rates.

Clustered sovereign defaults, where multiple countries default in a relatively short period of time, is a recurring phenomenon, yet there is a lack of quantitative models designed to study them. This paper builds a quantitative framework to study clustered defaults, and investigates the nature of shocks and the mechanism through which these shocks lead countries to clustered defaults. The paper begins with a joint estimation of structural parameters that drive the output process of 24 countries and a process for the world interest rate.

Cross-border portfolio capital flows have been shown to depend, in part, on risk perceptions and U.S. monetary policy. This paper contends that U.S. macroeconomic data releases are another important ‘global’ factor driving cross-border flows and that their effect depends on the guidance provided by the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed). I source data on allocations into investment funds and study the response of U.S. investors to domestic employment news, focusing on the period following the Great Financial Crisis.

Since October 2008, the Federal Reserve System began paying interest on reserves balances held by financial institutions. My work examines the effects of this monetary policy on asset prices and macroeconomic outcomes. To do so, I develop a dynamic heterogeneous-agent asset pricing model in which banks take leverage by borrowing from households. Banks have a choice of depositing reserves with the government. The government collects taxes from households to pay the interest on reserves. This policy reduces banks’ risk-taking, interpretable as less risky lending made to the real economy. Banks’ net worth becomes less volatile.

Food delivery platforms are a source of great value and are promising to grow dramatically in the next few years. Given the tremendous growth potential in food delivery platforms in India, platform providers need to understand the factors that restaurants consider before participating on platforms. We draw on multiple theoretical perspectives to model restaurant’s decision to participate on food delivery platforms.

Following the two decades of steady non-inflationary economic expansion during the Great Moderation, inflation targeting and a freely floating exchange rate was declared ‘international best practice’ in monetary policy. Many central banks, particularly in advanced economies, adopted it as their strategy. In addition, the prevailing view among a majority of academics and central bankers was that sharp movements in asset prices and financial imbalances should not influence central bank policy.