MIT Sloan - Alberto Cavallo

Alberto Cavallo

Cecil and Ida Green Career Development
Assistant Professor
of Applied Economics

Alberto Cavallo's research focuses on the micro-level behavior of prices and its implications for macroeconomic models and policies. His empirical work is based on the use of daily data collected from hundreds of online retailers around the world. He co-founded the Billion Prices Project at MIT, a research initiative that uses online data to conduct research on high-frequency price dynamics and inflation. Prior to Sloan, he co-founded Dineromail, the leading online-payments company in Latin America. Alberto received a B.S. fron Universidad de San Andres in Argentina in 2000, an MBA from MIT Sloan in 2005 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2010. He is married and has a son.

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acavallo@mit.edu
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Office Address
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sloan School of Management
100 Main Street, Office E62-512
Cambridge, MA 02142

Research Fields
Macroeconomics, Monetary Economics

Teaching
15.012 Applied Macro and International Economics

Working Papers

• "Prices and Supply Disruptions during Natural Disasters" (with Eduardo Cavallo and Roberto Rigobon).

• UPDATED "Product Introductions, Currency Areas, and the Real Exchange Rate" (with Brent Neiman and Roberto Rigobon) - NBER Working Paper 18563 - Appendix

• "Overlapping Quality Adjustment using Online Data"

• "Distance and Political Boundaries: Estimating Border Effects under Inequality Constraints" (with Fernando Borraz, Roberto Rigobon, and Leandro Zipitria)- NBER Working Paper 18122. Download NBER version.

• The Distribution of the Size of Price Changes (with Roberto Rigobon) - NBER Working Paper 16760 GAUSS code for PM Test.

• Scraped Data and Sticky Prices - MIT Sloan Working Paper -Appendix

Published Papers

• Online vs Official Price Indexes: Measuring Argentina′s Inflation - Journal of Monetary Economics. December 2012 | Presentation | Data Argentina

• Sudden Stops: Determinants and Output Effects in the First Era of Globalization, 1880-1913. Joint with Michael Bordo and Christopher Meissner. Journal of Development Economics, Volume 91, Issue 2, Pages 185-364. March 2010.

• Are Crises Good for Growth? The Role of Political Institutions. Joint with Eduardo Cavallo. Journal of Macroeconomics, Vol 32, Pages 838-857 March 2010.

Press

• Rethinking how the Inflation Rate is calulated NPR - Marketplace, April 17th 2013

• A 21st-century approach to democratizing data FCW, October 24th 2012

• Which of these is not like the others? The Economist, February 24th 2012

• Price in a trice The Economist, June 23rd 2011

• Soaring inflation? Not with 9% unemployment USA Today, June 9th 2011

• A Billion Prices Now The New Yorker. May 30th 2011

• The Prices Are Right Scientific American. May 2011

• The Billion Price Preview- Paul Krugman's Blog, March 28th 2011

• New Indications of Inflation EconBrowser - by James Hamilton. February 20th 2011

• The Billion Price Index- Paul Krugman's Blog, February 18th 2011

• Innovator: Alberto Cavallo- Businessweek, February 10th 2011