Jennifer La’O conducts research in macroeconomics, theory, and finance. Her current research focuses on how informational and financial frictions affect the short-run fluctuations of the aggregate economy. In her current paper, “Collateral Constraints and Noisy Fluctuations,” La'O explores how dispersed information and collateral constraints on firm-level investment lead to greater non-fundamental volatility in GDP and asset prices. Her most recent publication, “Noisy Business Cycles,” appears in the NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009.
La’O earned her PhD in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2010. Prior to pursuing her PhD, in 2005 she received her bachelor's degree in economics also from MIT, with a minor in mathematics. La'O received an award for best paper in the MIT Undergraduate Economics Journal, and as a graduate student she was awarded the Ida M. Green fellowship. La’O joined Chicago Booth in 2010.
When not doing research, La'O tries to get some laps in at the pool. As an undergraduate, La'O was captain of the MIT varsity swim team, earned Academic All-American honors, and held school and conference records in the 200 and 400 Individual Medley. In addition to swimming, she currently enjoys running, skiing, traveling, and salsa dancing.
Selected Publications
With George-Marios Angeletos, “Noisy Business Cycles,” NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009 (vol. 24).
With George-Marios Angeletos, “Incomplete Information, Higher-Order Beliefs and Price Inertia,” Journal of Monetary Economics (October 2009).
New: Incomplete Information, Higher-Order Beliefs and Price Inertia
Date Posted: Jun 15, 2009
This paper investigates who incomplete information impacts the response of prices to nominal shocks. Our baseline model is a variant of the Calvo model in which firms observe the underlying nominal shocks with noise. In this model, the response of prices is pinned down by three parameters: the precision of available information about the nominal shock; the frequency of price adjustment; and the degree of strategic complementarity in pricing decisions. This result synthesizes the broader lessons
New: Noisy Business Cycles
Date Posted: Jun 09, 2009
This paper investigates a real-business-cycle economy that features dispersed information about the underlying aggregate productivity shocks, taste shocks, and, potentially, shocks to monopoly power. We show how the dispersion of information can (i) contribute to significant inertia in the response of macroeconomic outcomes to such shocks; (ii) induce a negative short-run response of employment to productivity shocks; (iii) imply that productivity shocks explain only a small fraction of high-fre
New: Noisy Business Cycles
Date Posted: Jun 05, 2009
This paper investigates a real-business-cycle economy that features dispersed information about the underlying aggregate productivity shocks, taste shocks, and—potentially—shocks to monopoly power. We show how the dispersion of information can (i) contribute to significant inertia in the response of macroeconomic outcomes to such shocks; (ii) induce a negative short-run response of employment to productivity shocks; (iii) imply that productivity shocks explain only a small fraction of high-freq
New: Incomplete Information, Higher Order Beliefs, and Price Inertia
Date Posted: Jun 05, 2009
This paper investigates how incomplete information impacts the response of prices to nominal shocks. Our baseline model is a variant of the Calvo model in which firms observe the underlying nominal shocks with noise. In this mode, the response of prices is pinned down by three parameters: the precision of available information about the nominal shock: the frequency of price adjustment; and the degree of strategic complementarity in pricing decisions. This result synthesizes the broader lesso