Shalini Mitra recently defended her PhD dissertation titled, “Essays on the Volatility of Borrowing Constrained Economies” under the supervision of Professor Christian Zimmermann. 

Her dissertation tries to explain using different channels the increasing firm level volatility even in the presence of lower and decreasing aggregate volatility as seen during the period of the Great Moderation. She specifically looks at financial development and organization specific capital in explaining recent trends in aggregate and firm level volatilities. She also studies the role of an informal sector, which is relatively more borrowing constrained, on the macroeconomy. Her findings suggest that financial development as well as firm specific investments are associated with higher and increasing volatility at the firm level and non-increasing volatility at the aggregate with the divergence being more pronounced in the later case. She also finds that a more borrowing constrained informal sector has little effect on economic volatility.

Shalini starts her tenure-track position on February 1, 2012 and is relocating to Liverpool, England.

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