Our Team

Marios Karabarbounis

Marios Karabarbounis is a senior economist in the Research Department. Karabarbounis provides counsel to senior management and the Board of Directors on the national, regional and international economy, and monetary policy. He joined the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in 2012 after earning his doctorate from the University of Rochester.

Karabarbounis' research interests are in macroeconomics and labor economics.

Academic Publications

Regional Consumption Responses and the Aggregate Fiscal Multiplier

Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 90, November 2023: 2982–3021

Bill Dupor, Marios Karabarbounis, Marianna Kudlyak and M. Saif Mehkari

Previous Version: Working Paper, February 2018, No. 18-04

Income Volatility and Portfolio Choices

Review of Economic Dynamics, Vol. 44, April 2022: 65-90

Yongsung Chang, Jay H. Hong, Marios Karabarbounis, Yicheng Wang and Tao Zhang

Previous Version: Working Paper, March 2020, No. 20-01R

Misallocation and Financial Frictions: The Role of Long-Term Financing

Review of Economic Dynamics, Vol. 40, April 2021: Pages 44-63

Marios Karabarbounis and Patrick Macnamara

Previous Version: Working Paper, January 2019, No. 19-01R

Labor Market Uncertainty and Portfolio Choice Puzzles

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2018, Vol. 10: 222-262

Yongsung Chang, Jay H. Hong and Marios Karabarbounis

Previous Version: Working Paper, June 2014, No. 14-13R

A Road Map for Efficiently Taxing Heterogeneous Agents

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Vol. 8, April 2016: 182-214

Marios Karabarbounis

Previous Version: Working Paper, September 2013, No. 13-13R
Bank Publications

Economic Brief, February 2024, No. 24-04

How Female Labor Supply Shapes Aggregate Labor Market Dynamics

Several factors include labor market participation, business cycle volatility and responsiveness to the underlying economic environment.

Marios Karabarbounis

Economic Brief, May 2023, No. 23-14

How Much Do Labor Costs Affect Prices in Recessions and in Expansions?

Wage-price pass throughs may help explain why core goods inflation has risen so much faster in the current expansion than in previous ones.

Marios Karabarbounis

Economic Brief, February 2023, No. 23-05

How Important Are Asset Price Fluctuations for Business Investment?

Some believe declines in physical-asset prices prior to recessions make the recessions worse, but recent literature challenges the strength of that connection.

Marios Karabarbounis and Kushal Patel

Economic Brief, November 2022, No. 22-44

How Did Pandemic UI Benefits Affect Employment Recovery in Local Industry Markets?

Pandemic-era unemployment insurance affected recoveries of low-wage job markets and high-wage job markets differently.

Andreas Hornstein, Marios Karabarbounis, André Kurmann and Etienne Lalé

Economic Brief, February 2022, No. 22-04

Does Infrastructure Spending Boost the Economy?

Studies suggest that short-term effects of such spending are small and long-term effects depend on an economy's sensitivity to such investment.

Marios Karabarbounis

Economic Brief, August 2021, No. 21-26

Unemployment Insurance: Economic Lessons from the Last Two Recessions

Unemployment insurance seems to help smooth consumer spending after a job loss, but there's disagreement on how much it discourages people from finding new jobs.

Marios Karabarbounis

Economic Quarterly, Fourth Quarter 2020

A Life-Cycle Model with Individual Volatility Dynamics

Marios Karabarbounis

Special Reports, November 12, 2020

The Employment Recovery of Small and Large Employers

Policymakers, national pundits, and researchers often point to the importance of small firms in job creation. Did small firms play a special role in the recovery of aggregate employment during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Marios Karabarbounis, Matthew Murphy and Nicholas Trachter

Special Reports, September 4, 2020

The Effect of Lockdown Measures on Unemployment

Do the timing and length of lockdowns explain state-level differences in unemployment?

Marios Karabarbounis, Reiko Laski, James Lee and Nicholas Trachter

Special Reports, July 9, 2020

Does Social Distancing Explain Variation in COVID-19 Infection Rates? A Cross-Regional Analysis

Part 4: Financial Distress and the Second Wave of COVID-19 Infections

Marios Karabarbounis, Matthew Murphy and Nicholas Trachter

Special Reports, May 26, 2020

The Effects of Expiring Stay-at-Home Orders and the Shape of the Recovery

Marios Karabarbounis and Nicholas Trachter

Special Reports, May 15, 2020

Some Observations about Social Distancing across Space and Time

Marios Karabarbounis and Nicholas Trachter

Special Reports, April 17, 2020

How COVID-19 is Affecting Main Street

Marios Karabarbounis and Nicholas Trachter

Economic Quarterly, First Quarter 2020

Labor-Market Wedge under Engel Curve Utility: Cyclical Substitution between Necessities and Luxuries

Yongsung Chang, Andreas Hornstein and Marios Karabarbounis

Economic Quarterly, Fourth Quarter 2018

What Can We Learn from Online Wage Postings? Evidence from Glassdoor

Marios Karabarbounis and Santiago Pinto

Economic Brief, May 2018, No. 18-05

Estimating Aggregate Fiscal Multipliers from Local Data

Recent research has employed county-level data to look at the effects of federal government spending — in particular, the 2009—12 stimulus — on aggregate consumption.

Bill Dupor, Marios Karabarbounis, Marianna Kudlyak, M. Saif Mehkari and David A. Price

Economic Quarterly, Fourth Quarter 2015

Does Bank Lending Matter for Large Firms' Investment?

Marios Karabarbounis

Economic Quarterly, First Quarter 2014

A Business Cycle Analysis of Debt and Equity Financing

Marios Karabarbounis, Patrick Macnamara and Roisin McCord
Working Papers

November 2023, No. 23-11

Disincentive Effects of Unemployment Insurance Benefits

This paper provides independent estimates of the disincentive effects arising from the largest expansion of UI in U.S. history, the pandemic unemployment benefits.

Andreas Hornstein, Marios Karabarbounis, André Kurmann, Etienne Lalé and Lien Ta

March 2020, No. 20-01R

Income Volatility and Portfolio Choices (Revised September 2020)

Based on administrative data from Statistics Norway, we find economically significant shifts in households' financial portfolios around individual structural breaks in labor-income volatility.

Yongsung Chang, Jay H. Hong, Marios Karabarbounis, Yicheng Wang and Tao Zhang

January 2019, No. 19-01R

Misallocation and Financial Frictions: The Role of Long-Term Financing* (Revised August 2020)

Marios Karabarbounis and Patrick Macnamara

July 2018, No. 18-13

Labor-Market Wedge under Engel Curve Utility: Cyclical Substitution between Necessities and Luxuries

Yongsung Chang, Andreas Hornstein and Marios Karabarbounis

February 2018, No. 18-04

Regional Consumption Responses and the Aggregate Fiscal Multiplier (Revised April 2021)

Bill Dupor, Marios Karabarbounis, Marianna Kudlyak and M. Saif Mehkari

June 2014, No. 14-13R

Labor-Market Uncertainty and Portfolio Choice Puzzles (Revised July 2017)

A great uncertainty in the labor market--high unemployment risk, frequent job turnovers, and an unknown career path--prevents young workers from taking too much risk in the financial market. As labor-market uncertainty is resolved over time, workers start taking more risk in their financial portfolios.

Yongsung Chang, Jay H. Hong and Marios Karabarbounis

September 2013, No. 13-13R

A Road Map for Efficiently Taxing Heterogeneous Agents (Revised June 2015)

Marios Karabarbounis

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Marios Karabarbounis

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