Morteza Ghomi
Economic Developments Department
Morteza Ghomi Avili joined the Economic Development Department at the Banco de España in August 2023. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M, Spain), a M.Sc. in Economics Analysis from UC3M, a M.Sc. in Economics from the University of Tehran (Iran), and a B.Sc. in Economics from Semnan University (Iran). During his Ph.D., Morteza spent five months in the Deutsche Bundesbank research group as a research assistant.
Morteza is an applied macroeconomist, and his research mainly focuses on analyzing households and firms’ responses to aggregate macroeconomic shocks. In particular, he has been studying the effect of economic sanctions on poverty mobility (Economics and Politics 2021), and the impact of winning a lottery on households’ sentiments and consumption behavior (Journal of Monetary Economics 2024).
In his job market paper, he studies the state-dependent response of firms’ research and development (R&D) expenditure to monetary policy shocks in the US economy. Using Compustat firm-level data, he confirms that a monetary contraction leads to a persistent decline in US firms’ R&D expenditure. The effect on R&D expenditure is stronger for interest rate hikes and when firms face higher uncertainty. Empirical findings and a theoretical model in his paper highlight the importance of the credit channel for altering the effects of monetary policy on firms’ investment in R&D in the presence of economic uncertainty.