About

Sergio Rebelo is the MUFG Bank Distinguished Professor of International Finance at the Kellogg School of Management, where he has served as Chair of the Finance Department. His research focuses on macroeconomics and international finance, specifically studying the causes of business cycles, the impact of economic policy on economic growth, and the sources of exchange rate fluctuations. His work has been funded by prominent organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the World Bank, the Sloan Foundation, and the Olin Foundation. Professor Rebelo is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Center for Economic Policy Research. He has served on the editorial boards of several academic journals, including the American Economic Review, the European Economic Review, the Journal of Monetary Economics, and the Journal of Economic Growth. Throughout his career, he has received numerous teaching awards at the Kellogg School of Management, including the Executive Masters Program Outstanding Professor Award and the Professor of the Year Award. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Rochester, and he has held positions at Northwestern University and the Portuguese Catholic University, as well as research roles at the Bank of Portugal. Professor Rebelo has also served as a consultant to various organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve System, the European Central Bank, and Goldman Sachs, among others.

Research topics

• Macroeconomics
• Economics
• Sociology
• Monetary economics
• Geography
• Keynesian economics
• Finance
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• Valuing mortality risk reductions for environmental policy

  Review of Financial Studies · 517 citations

  • Sociology
  • Economics
  • Macroeconomics

  We extend the canonical epidemiology model to study the interaction between economic decisions and epidemics. Our model implies that people cut back on consumption and work to reduce the chances of being infected. These decisions reduce the severity of the epidemic but exacerbate the size of the associated recession. The competitive equilibrium is not socially optimal because infected people do not fully internalize the effect of their economic decisions on the spread of the virus. In our benchmark model, the best simple containment policy increases the severity of the recession but saves roughly half a million lives in the United States.

  DOI

• Banks and the State-Dependent Effects of Monetary Policy

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-02-01 · 4 citations

  reportOpen access

  This paper provides empirical evidence that contractionary monetary policy is less powerful in high interest-rate environments.We argue that this state dependence reflects the interaction between bank's net interest margins (the return on banks' assets minus the per-dollar cost of their funds), and households' high marginal propensity to consume out of liquid wealth.We construct a banking model in which social dynamics shape household attentiveness to deposit rates and embed it in a nonlinear heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian model.Estimated versions of the partial and general equilibrium models account well for the observed state dependence in the response of banks' net interest margins and the response of aggregate economic activity to monetary policy shocks.

  PublisherDOI

• Behavioral sticky prices

  Journal of Monetary Economics · 2025-09-25

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Markups Across Space and Time

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2025-12-28 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract In this article, we provide direct evidence on the behaviour of markups in the retail sector across space and time. Markups are measured using gross margins. We consider three levels of aggregation: the retail sector as a whole, the firm, and the product level. We find that: (1) markups are relatively stable over time and mildly procyclical; (2) there is a large regional dispersion in markups; (3) there is a positive cross-sectional correlation between local income and local markups; and (4) differences in markups across regions result from differences in the assortment of goods sold in different regions, not from deviations from uniform pricing. We propose a simple model consistent with these facts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Banks and the State-Dependent Effects of Monetary Policy

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Behavioral Sticky Prices

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-03-01 · 4 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We study a model where households make decisions according to a dual-process framework widely used in cognitive psychology.System 1 uses effortless heuristics but is susceptible to biases and errors.System 2 uses mental effort to make more accurate decisions.Through their pricing behavior, monopolistic producers can influence whether households deploy Systems 1 or 2. The strategic use of this influence creates a new source of price inertia and provides a natural explanation for the "rockets and feathers" phenomenon: prices rise quickly when costs increase but fall slowly when costs fall.Our model implies that price stability is not optimal.

  PublisherDOI

• Expectations, Infections, and Economic Activity

  Journal of Political Economy · 2024-01-12 · 15 citations

  article

  This paper develops a quantitative theory of how people weigh the risks of infections against the benefits of engaging in social interactions that contribute to the spread of infectious diseases. Our framework takes into account the effects of public policies and private behavior on the spread of the disease. We evaluate the model using a novel micro panel dataset on consumption expenditures of young and older people across the first three waves of COVID-19 in Portugal. Our model highlights the critical role of expectations in shaping how human behavior influences the dynamics of epidemics.

  PublisherDOI

• Behavioral Sticky Prices

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Replication files for: "Expectations, Infections, and Economic Activity"

  Harvard Dataverse · 2023-09-14

  datasetOpen access

  This is the replication package for "Expectations, Infections, and Economic Activity," accepted in 2023 by the Journal of Political Economy.

  PublisherDOI

• Foreign Residents and the Future of Global Cities

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2023-06-01

  reportOpen access

  Global cities are attracting a growing number of tourists and foreign residents. This influx generates capital gains for property owners but adversely affects renters, creating potentially important production, congestion, and amenities externalities. We study the optimal policy regarding local and foreign residents in a model with key features emphasized in policy debates. Using this model, we provide sufficient statistics to calculate the optimal tax and transfer policies that internalize agglomeration, congestion, and other potential externalities. We find that it is not optimal to impose zoning regulations or to restrict, tax, or subsidize home purchases by foreign residents. However, it may be optimal to charge an entry fee to foreign residents.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Martin Eichenbaum

  Northwestern University

  235 shared

• Craig Burnside

  157 shared

• Nir Jaimovich

  65 shared

• Carlos Végh

  60 shared

• Pedro Teles

  Banco de Portugal

  56 shared

• Mathias Trabandt

  Halle Institute for Economic Research

  35 shared

• Ariel Burstein

  31 shared

• Rui Albuquerque

  Boston College

  30 shared

Awards & honors

• Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award, 2024-25
• Elected Fellow of the Econometric Society
• Elected Member American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Martin E. and Gertrude G. Walder Award for Research Excellen…
• Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award, Kellogg School of Management,…