Lars Hansen

About

Lars Peter Hansen is a leading expert in economic dynamics who works at the boundaries of macroeconomics, finance, and econometrics. His current collaborative research develops and applies methods for pricing the exposure to macroeconomic shocks over alternative investment horizons and investigates the implications of the pricing of long-term uncertainty. Moreover, he studies the econometric challenges of identifying investor beliefs from observed asset prices.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Law
• Computer Science
• Positive economics
• Medicine
• Ecology
• Economic history
• Virology
• Geography

Selected publications

• Central banking challenges posed by uncertain climate change and natural disasters

  Journal of Monetary Economics · 2021 · 109 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Climate change poses an important policy challenge for governments around the world. The challenge is made all that much more difficult because of the multitude of potential policymakers involved in setting the policy worldwide. What then should be the role of central banks? How are climate change concerns similar to or distinct from those of other natural disasters? Clarity of ambition and execution will help to ensure that central banks maintain credibility. By adhering to their mandated roles…

  PublisherDOI

• Rational policymaking during a pandemic

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 105 citations

  Policymaking during a pandemic can be extremely challenging. As COVID-19 is a new disease and its global impacts are unprecedented, decisions are taken in a highly uncertain, complex, and rapidly changing environment. In such a context, in which human lives and the economy are at stake, we argue that using ideas and constructs from modern decision theory, even informally, will make policymaking a more responsible and transparent process.

  DOI

• A Monetary and Fiscal History of Latin America, 1960–2017

  2020 · 58 citations

  The Monetary and Fiscal History of Latin America Project was launched in 2013 by the University of Chicago’s Lars Peter Hansen in his former capacity as the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and as part of its fiscal policy initiative. Upon the advice of Thomas Sargent, New York University, and former Distinguished Fellow of the BFI, and Fernando Alvarez, University of Chicago, the Institute provided funding and other support for this vibrant project initiated and led throughout by the…

  DOI

• Climate Change Uncertainty Spillover in the Macroeconomy

  NBER Macroeconomics Annual · 2022-05-01 · 48 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Asset pricing under smooth ambiguity in continuous time

  Economic Theory · 2022-06-30 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract We study asset pricing implications of a revealing and tractable formulation of smooth ambiguity investor preferences in a continuous-time environment. Investors do not observe a hidden Markov state and instead make inferences about this state using past data. We show that ambiguity about this hidden state distribution alters investor decisions and equilibrium asset prices. Our continuous-time formulation allows us to apply recursive filtering and Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman methods to solv…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Weathering Uncertainty in the Long Run

  NSF · $201k · 2005–2009

Frequent coauthors

• Thomas J. Sargent

  215 shared

• José Scheinkman

  Columbia University

  97 shared

• Jaroslav Borovička

  New York University

  47 shared

• William A. Brock

  30 shared

• Loïc Berger

  Université de Lille

  24 shared

• Mássimo Marinacci

  22 shared

• Xiaohong Chen

  Hunan Cancer Hospital

  19 shared

• Michael Barnett

  19 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  University of Chicago

  1982

• M.A., Economics

  University of Chicago

  1979

• B.A., Economics

  University of Minnesota

  1975

Awards & honors

• Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

Similar researchers at University of Chicago

• Anil Kashyaph-84
• Erik Hursth-68
• Chang-Tai Hsiehh-56