Andreas Schaab

Andreas Schaab is a macroeconomist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, within the Business & Economics faculty. His main academic specialty is macroeconomics and monetary economics. He grew up in Germany and received his AB in Economics magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2015 and his PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University in 2021. Prior to Berkeley, Schaab was an Assistant Professor at Toulouse School of Economics. He has served as a Faculty Research Fellow in the Economic Fluctuations and Growth program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Earlier in his career, he worked as a research assistant for Emmanuel Farhi at Harvard, Olivier Blanchard at the International Monetary Fund, and at the Bundesbank.

Schaab's research examines monetary policy and business cycle fluctuations, emphasizing the implications of household heterogeneity and inequality for optimal policy design, including normative aspects and stabilization policy. Motivated by events like the 2008 financial crisis and post-COVID dynamics, his work integrates theoretical models with empirical considerations such as cross-sectional differences in marginal propensities to consume. Key publications include 'Multinational Banks and Financial Stability' co-authored with Christopher Clayton, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2022 and recipient of the 2020 Finance Theory Group Best Job Market Paper Award; 'Bail-Ins, Optimal Regulation, and Crisis Resolution' with Christopher Clayton in the Review of Financial Studies in 2025; and 'Welfare Assessments with Heterogeneous Individuals' with Eduardo Dávila in 2024. Prominent working papers feature 'A Theory of Dynamic Inflation Targets' with Christopher Clayton (2024), 'A Dynamic Theory of Optimal Tariffs' with Eduardo Dávila, Andrés Rodríguez-Clare, and Stacy Tan (NBER Working Paper No. 33898, 2025), and 'Structural Reinforcement Learning for Heterogeneous Agent Macroeconomics' with Yucheng Yang, Chiyuan Wang, and Benjamin Moll (2025). Schaab has taught intermediate macroeconomics at Harvard and currently instructs macroeconomics courses at Berkeley, including ECON 202A and ECON 100B. Earlier honors include national championships in the U.S. College Fed Challenge in 2011 and 2013.