About

Amir Kermani holds the Kingsford Capital Management Chair in Finance at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. He received his PhD in economics from MIT in 2013 and is a faculty research fellow at the NBER. His research interests include monetary policy, household finance, financial intermediation, and political economy. Since joining Haas in 2013, he has held positions as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and now Professor. His work has contributed to understanding the mechanisms of quantitative easing, the relationship between stock market returns and consumption, interest rate pass-through effects on household behavior, the value of trading relations during turbulent times, credit-induced economic cycles, and the impact of connections in financial markets. Kermani's background includes a MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, a MSc in Managerial Economics from Sharif University of Technology, and a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tehran.

Research topics

• Economics
• Sociology
• Finance
• Political Science
• Business
• Economic growth
• Financial system
• Financial economics
• Demographic economics
• Monetary economics

Selected publications

• Rebalancers and the Cross-Asset Transmission of Expectations Shocks

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• In the Fed’s Mind

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Monetary Policy and Housing Overvaluation

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Monetary Policy and Housing Overvaluation

  IMF Working Paper · 2025-10-01

  articleOpen access

  This paper examines how housing market overvaluation—measured by the price-to-rent ratio and its deviations from long-term trends—affects the transmission of monetary policy. Using U.S. metropolitan-level data and three measures of monetary policy shocks, we find that house prices respond more strongly to policy rate changes in overvalued markets. Examining buyer heterogeneity, we show that investor demand, proxied by non-owner-occupied purchases, declines more sharply after monetary tightening in these markets. These results are consistent with models of extrapolative beliefs and suggest that monetary policy can serve a stabilizing role during housing booms.

  PublisherDOI

• Monetary Policy and Housing Overvaluation

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-10-01

  reportOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Native-Immigrant Entrepreneurial Synergies

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• How Racial Differences in Housing Returns Shape Retirement Security

  2025-04-03

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Housing is a key resource for US retirees, comprising two-fifths of the net wealth of retirement-age Americans, and those who experience higher housing returns are better prepared for retirement. Following a home sale, a one percentage point increase in annual returns raises subsequent home ownership rates by about one percentage point (about 2.5 percent). While migrating homeowners who had higher returns move to neighborhoods with more favorable healthcare, longevity impacts, and crime rates, these benefits are substantially larger for White homeowners relative to Black and Hispanic homeowners. We emphasize the importance of policies that target disparities that occur prior to retirement.

  PublisherDOI

• In the Fed's Mind

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Native-Immigrant Entrepreneurial Synergies

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-05-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access

  We examine the performance of startups co-founded by immigrant and native teams.Leveraging unique data linking startups to founders' and employees' employment and education histories, we find native-migrant teams outperform native-only and migrant-only teams.Native-migrant startups have larger employment three years after founding, are more likely to secure funding, access larger funding rounds, and achieve more successful exits.An instrumental variables strategy based on native shares in university-degree programs confirms native-migrant teams are larger and more likely to receive funding.Superior access to diverse labor pools, successful VCs, and expanded product markets are key factors in driving native-migrant outperformance.

  PublisherDOI

• Do intermediaries improve GSE lending? Evidence from proprietary GSE data

  Journal of Financial Economics · 2025-05-09

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  We analyze the trade-offs of having intermediaries originate government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) mortgages using proprietary GSE data. We first find evidence of lenders pricing for observable and unobservable default risk independently of the GSEs. We then develop and estimate a model of competitive lending in which lenders have skin-in-the-game and conduct additional screening beyond the GSEs’ criteria. Lenders reduce costs via screening but also charge markups. On net, interest rates are higher compared to a counterfactual effectively without intermediaries. In an extension, the observed differences between banks and nonbanks are more consistent with differences in their skin-in-the-game rather than screening quality.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Marco Di Maggio

  62 shared

• Daron Acemoğlu

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  43 shared

• Simon Johnson

  New School

  41 shared

• Todd Mitton

  Brigham Young University

  39 shared

• James Kwak

  39 shared

• Zhaogang Song

  22 shared

• Kaveh Majlesi

  Monash University

  17 shared

• Rodney Ramcharan

  University of Southern California

  14 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

  2013

Awards & honors

• RFS Rising Scholar Award (2018)
• MIT Department of Economics Fellowship
• HAND Foundation Scholarship
• Gold Medal of 33rd International Physics Olympiad IPhO (2002…