Maciej Sztachera
Thank you for visiting my website!
I am a PhD candidate in Economics at Goethe University Frankfurt (GSEFM).
I am on the 2026/2027 academic job market.
My research lies in macroeconomics, and I am interested in how microeconomic heterogeneity shapes macroeconomic outcomes.
You can find my CV here.
Job Market Paper
Hours, Wages, and Multipliers
Sticky-price heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian (HANK) models struggle to simultaneously match the empirical magnitudes of (i) the average consumption response to unanticipated wealth shocks (MPC), (ii) the average short-run labor earnings response to these shocks (MPE), and (iii) the aggregate output response to government spending shocks.
This tension is known as the Auclert–Bardóczy–Rognlie HANK trilemma.
It arises because matching (i) and (ii) requires preferences that reduce the wealth effect on labor supply and thereby inflate fiscal multipliers, contradicting (iii).
The canonical sticky-wage solution assumes uniform hours, which arise when workers' hours are perfect complements.
However, existing empirical evidence shows that hours are gross but imperfect complements.
In this paper, I introduce imperfect complementarity between hours into the labor aggregation of otherwise standard sticky-price and sticky-wage HANK models.
Hours complementarities in the range of micro estimates close half to three-quarters of the gap between the baseline MPE and the data.
They do so without inflating fiscal multipliers because they reduce the wealth effect of idiosyncratic but not aggregate shocks.
Work in progress
Attention to Interest Rates and Wealth Inequality
Abstract
We investigate how households' attention to interest rates varies with wealth and study its implications for wealth inequality.
Using a representative panel of German households, we document a robust and pronounced wealth gradient in interest rate forecast accuracy, with low-wealth households making substantially less accurate forecasts.
We provide evidence that the wealth gradient in forecast accuracy reflects differences in attention to interest rates across households.
Moreover, we conduct an RCT in which we provide households with information about the average interest rate on deposit accounts in Germany and show that wealthier households revise their expectations less in response to the information, consistent with a higher degree of attention.
We build a quantitative life-cycle model with endogenous attention to interest rates to study how heterogeneity in attention affects wealth accumulation and aggregate inequality.
Teaching
Quantitative Macroeconomics and Numerical Methods (PhD), TA,
Winter 2025
