I am an Assistant Professor in the Finance Area at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.
Before joining Duke, I completed a PhD in Economics at Yale University.
My research interests are in Corporate Finance, Financial Intermediation, and Macroeconomics.
You can reach me at francesco.beraldi@duke.edu.
You can find my CV here.
Working Papers
USC Marshall Trefftzs Award for Best Student Paper; The Brattle Group Ph.D. Candidate Awards For Outstanding Research; George Trimis Prize for Distinguished Dissertation in Economics
Abstract
How do long-term relationships between banks and firms shape loan pricing and capital allocation? Using administrative data from Mexico's credit registry, I provide stark evidence for an insurance view of relationship lending. When firms repeatedly borrow from the same bank, the pass-through of their default risk to loan rates is nearly zero, and past risk assessments persistently influence credit terms. In contrast, switching to a new bank results in full risk pass-through, consistent with competitive market predictions. I rationalize this evidence in a structural model where banks compete for borrowers by offering optimal long-term contracts. Switching costs sustain commitment to banking relationships, enabling insurance. The estimated model replicates the observed pricing patterns and generates new predictions on when firms receive cheap funding and when they are tempted to switch, which I validate in the data. At the macro level, by strengthening relationships, switching costs enhance capital allocation and recover over 10 percent of welfare losses from financial frictions. However, when embedded in a New Keynesian framework, relationships dampen monetary and fiscal policy pass-through, as banks optimally absorb a portion of these policy shocks.
Abstract
We show that households spend their marginal and their average dollar differently across sectors. Crucially, marginal expenditure is biased toward sectors employing high-MPC workers, revealing a new redistribution channel that benefits high-MPC households during expansions. We build a Multi-Sector, Two-Agent, New Keynesian model with non-homothetic preferences consistent with these findings. The new redistribution channel increases the fiscal multiplier by 10pp compared to an equivalent homothetic economy. The model also predicts steeper Phillips curves in sectors with high-MPC workers, a result we validate empirically with a novel identification strategy. The implied sectoral wage dynamics strengthen the redistribution towards high-MPC households, preventing a full reversal of the initial boom due to future taxes and raising the inflationary impact of the shock by over 70 percent.
Abstract
We study the role of information heterogeneity in determining capital flows during the global financial cycle. When global uncertainty increases, investors retrench toward their home country and the United States. We build a model of portfolio choice and information acquisition with varying learning costs across countries. Our model replicates the global financial cycle’s stylized facts and has new predictions for forecasters’ accuracy, which we test using micro forecast data. Domestic forecasters better predict their own country’s economic outcomes, especially with increased global uncertainty. However, the US is an exception, where domestic forecasters do not outperform foreign institutions.
Abstract
We analyze the pricing-out phenomenon in the U.S. residential housing market due to higher house prices associated with monetary easing. We set up a stylized general equilibrium model and show that although monetary easing decreases mortgage payments, it raises house prices, lowers housing affordability for first-time homebuyers, and increases housing wealth inequality between first-time and repeat homebuyers. We then use U.S. household-level data to quantify the effect of the house price change on housing affordability relative to that of the interest rate change. We find evidence of the pricing-out effect for all homebuyers; moreover, we find that the pricing-out effect is stronger for first-time homebuyers than for repeat homebuyers. The paper highlights the importance of accounting for general equilibrium effects and distributional implications of monetary policy while assessing housing affordability and calls for complementing monetary easing with targeted policy measures that can boost housing affordability, particularly for first-time and lower-income households.
