Intellectual Property Rights, Inflation, and Liquidity Premia: Ana Maria Santacreu and Fernando Martin

The economists in the St. Louis Fed's Research Division conduct and publish important research in top scholarly journals. Recent work from economic policy advisors Santacreu and Martin is described below.

Ana Maria Santacreu conducted research on the determinants of international technology licensing that was recently accepted for publication in Review of Economics and Statistics: "International Technology Licensing, Intellectual Property Rights, and Tax Havens." Her multi-country model includes an assessment of royalty payments, imperfect intellectual property protection, and differences in corporate taxation, highlighting specifically how taxation shapes cross-border technology flows and the consequences of profit-shifting.

Fernando Martin and co-author David Andolfatto conducted research on the principles governing the evolution and maturity structure of the national debt that was recently published in Review of Economic Dynamics: "Welfare-enhancing inflation and liquidity premia." They find that, even in the absence of government funding risk, a rationale for issuing nominal debt in different maturities, purposely mispricing long-term debt and growing the nominal debt to support a strictly positive inflation target.

In addition, the work of Research Division economists is being cited in scholarly journals at an increasing rate. In 2022, their citations count averaged more than four times per day, for a total of 1,631 citations. Carlos Garriga, senior vice president and the director of research, has noted that "this growth reflects the high caliber work of our researchers and their impact on the economics profession, which hopefully attracts additional talent to our institution."