Mario Rafael Silva
Incoming Teaching Assistant Professor of Economics — Northeastern University. Previously Assistant Professor of Economics at Hong Kong Baptist University.
I study how liquidity shapes employment, firm creation, and aggregate demand — building quantitative models that bridge monetary theory and macro-labor economics. My work explores the interaction between liquidity constraints, endogenous product variety, and search frictions in the markets for goods, labor, and credit.
A central finding in my research is a lively connection between liquidity and Keynesian aggregate demand feedback.
Recent Publications
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Productive Demand and Sectoral Capacity Utilization
Bayesian estimation with sectoral utilization data shows search demand shocks explain most variance in output and utilization, and replicate observed sectoral comovement.
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Unemployment and Labor Productivity Comovement: The Role of Firm Exit
Sunk entry costs and distinct business destruction/match separation channels resolve empirical discrepancies in the DMP model's unemployment–productivity predictions.
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Unsecured Credit, Product Variety, and Unemployment Dynamics
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Corporate Finance, Monetary Policy, and Aggregate Demand
Teaching
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ECON 7800 — Advanced Macroeconomics
MSc — Hong Kong Baptist University, 2021–2023
Key concepts in macroeconomics, OLG models, RBC, financial frictions, heterogeneous agents, unemployment, and demand-induced fluctuations. Computation in Julia.
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Digital Economy (ECON 4035 / ECON 7640)
UG / MSc — Hong Kong Baptist University, Spring 2022, 2025
Central Bank Digital Currency, financial inclusion, and liquidity. CBDC pilot projects in China, the EU, and other countries as case studies.
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BUSI 2045 — Data Analytics for Business Decision Making
Undergraduate — Hong Kong Baptist University, Spring 2025, 2026
Python-based introduction to data management, statistical inference, questionnaire design, and hypothesis testing.