Fernando Alvarez
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Fernando Alvarez is a macroeconomist. He is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1994.
Fernando Alvarez's most influential contribution seems to be his work with Urban Jerman (Wharton) on endogenously incomplete markets. They show how the limited commitment model of Kehoe and Levine and Kocherlakota can be decentralized with certain borrowing constraints. They also showed how this model could explain some feature of asset prices, such as the equity premium. Several papers have used their model later on to explain other macroeconomic phenomena.
Fernando Alvarez has also presented a new estimate of the welfare cost of business cycles, based on observed asset prices (with Urban Jerman). His other work includes models of monetary economies with segmented markets, and search models with incomplete markets.
On a personal level, Fernando Alvarez is known for his enlightening remarks during seminars. "Hold on", he would say to stop a speaker. "Gotcha", to let him go.
