Curriculum Vitae – Michael P Curran

Curriculum Vitae – Michael P Curran
Contact
Information
Education
k mpcurran@tcd.ie
m michael-curran.com
H +353-87-127-5975
October 11, 2014
dob: 11-May-1986
Citizenship: Ireland
2011 – Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
PhD Candidate in Economics (Supervisor: Prof Philip Lane)
‘Understanding Uncertainty, Volatility & Macroeconomic Performance’
2014 University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A. (Jan–Aug)
Visiting PhD Student (Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Enrique Mendoza)
2010 – 2011 Northwestern University, U.S.A.
MA in Economics
2008 – 2009 Cambridge University, U.K.
MPhil in Economics (Supervisor: Prof Andrew Harvey)
‘A Stochastic Model of Current Account Dynamics’
2004 – 2008 Trinity College Dublin, Ireland First Place
B.A. Maths & Economics (Double First Class Honours) & Gold Medal
Exam Results: First Class (I) every year
Research Fields
Primary: International Financial Macroeconomics, Uncertainty
Secondary: New Macroeconometrics, Computational Economics, Econometrics
Academic
Achievements
2014 Young Scientist at 5th Lindau Nobel Meetings (Economics)
– one of 450 from 20,000 nationally and internationally selected
2014 Irish Lindau Nobel Meeting Award 2014
2012 IRC Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship
2010 University Fellowship Northwestern University for Economics PhD
2009 Economics Gold Medal from Irish President at Undergraduate Awards
of Ireland inaugural ceremony (Presidential National Level Award)
2008 Robert Gardiner Memorial Scholarship, Cambridge European Trust
& Department of Economics Bursary, Cambridge University
2008 Dublin Univ Gold Medal placing first in finals with exceptional marks
2006 Foundation Scholar of Dublin University (five years free fees, room
& board) placing first in my course and faculty in 2nd year exams
2005 Dermot McAleese Economics Prize
Professional
Affiliations
American Economic Association, European Economic Association, Royal Economic Society, Econometric Society
Research
Experience
2011 → 2012 Research Assistant, Prof Philip Lane, Econ Dept, TCD
2009 → 2010 Research Assistant, Prof Philip Lane, Econ Dept, TCD
2006 → 2008 Research Assistant, Prof Antoin Murphy, Econ Dept, TCD
2008 Summer Research Intern, Macroeconomic Analysis, ESRI Ireland
Ireland’s leading economic & social policy research institute
2006 June → August Consultant Researcher, Irish Hospice Foundation:
Irish Financial Services & Construction sectors
2005 August → September Research Intern, Dolmen Stockbrokers
Job Market Paper ‘Interest Rate Volatility & Macroeconomic Dynamics’
This paper contributes to the empirical literature and the theoretical, quantitative
modelling literature on international financial macroeconomics, in addition to developing computational methods of practical benefit for applied macroeconomists.
I document new stylised facts on the relation between real interest rate volatility
and macroeconomic variables for a panel of 27 countries including emerging markets and peripheral and core euro area economies using data up to 2013.02. Empirically, the key new result is that volatility leads the cycle by about 15 months,
which is significantly longer than the four month lead previously estimated for
pre-crisis Latin America. This holds once a broad range of economies are taken
into account over an extended time period and arises from considering correlations
at various lag lengths. Many other findings are consistent with earlier work on
four Latin American economies before the financial crisis. Theoretically, I show
that the facts can be reproduced from a quantitative DSGE model augmented
with stochastic volatility shocks. The central mechanism is precautionary savings.
The economy contracts following volatility shocks with a delay as evidenced in
the empirical results mainly due to adjustment costs of capital. Amongst other
extensions, the paper explores topics in the open economy literature. Volatility
solves an international macro finance puzzle, reducing the average cross-country
output correlation implied by the model to a level consistent with the data. Additionally, I investigate the effects of sovereign spread volatility on the dynamics
of variables such as net foreign assets, the current account and the trade balance.
Further extensions are explored including the effects of the Great Recession. The
paper also contributes to the field of computational economics, developing a new
computational algorithm that extends recent higher order pruning results for perturbation methods to account for macroeconomic transformations such as dealing
with mixed frequency data, variables that can take both negative and positive
values and filters. Regarding high-performance computing, I overcome significant
estimation and computational limitations by using high-level parallelism through
bash and SLURM scripting making use of multiple job submission on clusters and a
novel use of the bash xargs command to automatically schedule tasks over multiple cores, significantly reducing overall runtime from weeks to minutes for the
empirical model and from weeks to hours for the DSGE model.
Working Papers
‘On Irish Interest Rates and Volatility – A Case Study’. Aug. 2014.
‘Evidence on Real Interest Rate Volatility: A Potent Ingredient’. Jan. 2014.
Computers
Teaching
Experience
V Fortran/C, MPI/OpenMP, CUDA, Bash/SLURM, Git, MATLAB/Dynare,
Mathematica, R, RATS, EViews, OxMetrics/STAMP, Stata, html/css, GNU/Linux,
MS Applications, LATEX 2ε
2014 Adjunct Lecturer: 3rd Year Mathematical Economics, TCD (Autumn)
2013 Adjunct Lecturer: 4th Year Macroeconomics, TCD (Autumn)
2013 Adjunct Lecturer: MSc Econometrics, TCD (Spring)
2013 Adjunct Lecturer: 3rd Year Econometrics, TCD (Spring)
2011 → 2012 Teaching Assistant: 1st Year Introduction to Economics, TCD
– nominated for teaching assistantship award –
Courses completed : Preparing to Lecture – (TCD, 2012); Introduction to Teaching
and Supporting Learning for Postgraduates who Teach – (TCD, 2011); New TA
Conference at Searle Center for Teaching Excellence – (Northwestern, 2011)
Field Courses
Awarded Distinction in all fields. TCD: Trade & Growth, Advanced International
Macro, Research Seminars; Williams College: Financial Crises; UBC/TCD: Open
Economy Macro; Oxford/UCD: Panel Data Metrics; Northwestern/Pennsylvania/TCD:
Methods in Macroeconomic Dynamics/Time Series Methods
Audited : University of Pennsylvania: Advanced Time-Series Econometrics, International Macroeconomics with Incomplete Markets & Financial Frictions; International Macro (Stanford/TCD); Time Series Econometrics (AEA 2013); MacroFinancial Analysis (Princeton/TCD); International Finance (Virginia/TCD); Volatility: Measurement, Modelling and Forecasting (EUI Florence/EACBN); Tools for
Macroecomists: Advanced Tools (LSE Methods Summer Programme); TCHPC:
TCHPC Systems, Linux, Bash Shell Scripting, Parallel Programming, CUDA
Academic Service
2014 → Student Administrator: TCD International Macro Group blog
2012 → 2013 Class Representative: Economics research postgraduates, TCD
2012, 2013 Student Representative: Supplemental First Appeal Court, TCD
2012, 2013 Student Representative: Court of First Appeal, TCD