Jiani Liu
Welcome! I'm a Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at The Ohio State University.
Research Interest:
Macro, Labor, and International Economics
Contact:
Email: liu.10336@osu.edu
Research
Work in Progress
- Entrepreneurial Dynamics and the Great Recession
- Maturity and Consumer Default Risks
This paper studies how entrepreneurial entry, exit, and income dynamics affect job creation and business cycles. Entrepreneurs vary in their motivations, skills, income levels, and responses to economic cycles and policy changes. It is found that entrepreneurial entry and exit rates remain relatively constant over time, even during the Great Recession. I develop a model that endogenously determines entrepreneurship among entrepreneurs, workers, and the unemployed, and aligns with observed facts. I explain the factors behind the stable entrepreneurial entry and exit rates by introducing necessity motivation and opportunity motivation. I examine whether the consistency in entry and exit rates helps or hinders economic recovery, and how unemployment insurance policy affects entrepreneurship through the model’s mechanism. I find that necessity-driven entrepreneurial entry from unemployed households plays a crucial role in shaping entrepreneurship over time.
I study the implications of unsecured debt maturity in a general equilibrium model in which households face idiosyncratic endowment shocks. In the model economy, households can default on their debts. I find that as maturities lengthen, the number of borrowers increases. This rise in borrowers coincides with a higher overall default rate and a decline in the number of savers, leading to a reduction in total savings. Although more people engage in borrowing, individual households borrow less. The comovement of borrowing and saving emerges in equilibrium, where the risk-free rate experiences a slight decline as maturity extends. I also analyze welfare effects and find that households prefer long-term debt over short-term debt, resolving the puzzle posed by partial equilibrium models of debt maturity. The decrease in the risk-free rate can account for this preference.
Teaching
Teaching Assistant
- Macroeconomic Theory IA (ECON 8721)
- Money and Banking (ECON 4200)
- Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory (ECON 4002)
- Principles of Macroeconomics (ECON 2002)