AARON MEDLIN

Aaron M. Medlin, PhD

[email protected]

I am an Assistant Professor of the Practice for the International Studies program at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, where I teach international economics, immigration, comparative economic systems, and research methods. Previously, I was a research assistant at the Political Economy Research Institute. I received my Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The main fields of my research interests include macroeconomics, international finance, political economy, and comparative capitalism.

My dissertation contributes to a deeper understanding of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the Federal Reserve’s international response as lender-of-last-resort, and the U.S. government’s campaign for benchmark interest rate reform. Identifying the source of the breakdown of monetary policy transmission to the U.S. economy as due to LIBOR, an offshore dollar interbank rate, which significantly deviated from domestic interest rates after the collapse of subprime mortgage bubble, the dissertation investigates how the Federal Reserve used currency swap lines to influence LIBOR and improve monetary policy transmission, investigates the factors driving central bank swap line usage by foreign central banks, and explores the shift from LIBOR to risk-free rates under central bank oversight.

My most recent project applies empirical macroeconomics and time series methods to the relationship between monetary policy and wealth inequality.