Assistant Professor of Economics
Los Angeles, CA, UNITED STATES
Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
Ph.D., Economics
2016
B.A., Economics
2007
Baseball Team, Loyola Marymount University, 2018
Economics Department, Loyola Marymount University, 2017
Emerald Publishing, 2017 http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/authors/literati/citations/awards.htm?id=2017.
Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2014
Foreign Policy, 2013 http://2013-global-thinkers.foreignpolicy.com/
Foreign Policy, 2013 http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/12/31/presenting-the-albies-of-2013/
Boston Globe, 2013 https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2013/12/22/bostonians-year-honorable-mentions/PQbwVNvFnmMnGRcfEdjZLL/story.html
The Colbert Report tv
2013-04-23
Graduate student Thomas Herndon identifies little staggering omissions in a prominent academic paper, "Growth in a Time of Debt."
Bloomberg News tv
2018-08-17
48:50 of this clip
Plenary presentation at Consumer Federation of America Annual Conference Washington D.C., Dec 2019
Invited presentation, St. Louis Federal Reserve St. Louis, November 2019
Faculty Mentor University of Southern California, Los Angeles, February 2019
Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and Law (APPEAL) "Money as a Democratic Medium" Conference Harvard Law School, Cambridge, December 2018
Discussant, Tax Policy Colloquium Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, November 2018
Tipping Points III: Debt Financed Homeownership: It's Evolution, Impact, and Future Policy Research Symposium, Washington DC, October 2018
Union for Radical Political Economics 50th Anniversary Conference and Celebration University of Massachusetts, September 2018
Economic Justice Speaker Series Department of Economics, John Jay School of Criminal Justice CUNY, March 2018
Macroeconomics Seminar New School for Social Research Department of Economics, March 2018
Teach-in with Congressman Mark Takano Irvine, California, February 2018
Community Meeting Regarding the 2017 Federal Tax Bill with Congresswoman Maxine Waters Westchester, California, January 2018
Post-Crisis Economic Strains and Policy in Europe and the US Association for Social Economics at the American Economic Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, January 2018
Town Hall Meeting with Congresswoman Maxine Waters, December 2017 Los Angeles Harbor College
Economics Seminar Series Loyola Marymount University, November 2017
Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts Faculty Research Symposium Loyola Marymount University, November 2017
Keynote Speaker, Festival for New Economic Thinking Edinburgh, Scotland, October 2017
Invited Talk for Department of Economics University of Missouri, Kansas City, April 2017
Institute for New Economic Thinking
2019-2020
ECON 3200
ECON 5320
FFYS 1000
Forthcoming 2020
view morewith Mark Paul
Forthcoming 2020
view morewith Robert Pollin and James Heintz
2018, 32:6, 772-806
view morewith Michael Ash and Robert Pollin
2014, vol. 38, issue 2, 257-279
view more2017-10-17
Thomas Herndon
I estimate the extent to which modifications of privately securitized mortgages increased or forgave debt during the Great Recession and aftermath, from 2008-2014. I find that loan modifications weakened household balance sheets by adding $20 billion to household debt, with the net amount of debt added per modification doubling from 2010-2014. Using a decomposition analysis, I also find that the increase in debt is consistent with capitalization of fees. Capitalization of fees is significant because it has been associated with a principal-agent problem between investors and mortgage servicers which prevented efficient loss mitigation, as well as consumer financial protection abuses.
view more2017-07-30
This paper estimates the revenue potential of a financial transaction tax (FTT) for U.S. financial markets. We focus on analyzing the revenue potential of the Inclusive Prosperity Act that was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 and the U.S. Senate in 2015. The tax rates stipulated in this Act include 0.5 percent (50 basis points) for all stock transactions; 0.1 percent (10 basis points) for all bond transactions; and 0.005 percent (0.5 basis points) on the notional value of all derivative trades. We examine three sets of evidence to generate potential revenue estimates: 1) the levels of transaction costs in U.S. financial markets over time and within the range of financial market segments; 2) the extent of trading elasticities under various trading conditions; and 3) the current level of trading activity in U.S. financial markets. Based on this evidence, we conclude that a US FTT operating at the tax rates stated above would generate about $250 billion pe r year, assuming that a combination of trading volume decline and tax avoidance generates the equivalent of a 50 percent fall in trading revenue. We then consider additional factors whose impact will reduce the net revenue generated by the Act. Adding up these various considerations, we conclude conservatively that the net revenue potential of this U.S. FTT is around $220 billion per year, which equals approximately 1.2 percent of current U.S. GDP. This revenue estimate as a share of GDP is consistent with experiences in other countries that have operated with FTTs with similar tax rates and other design features. It is also consistent with other projections based on tax rates that are comparable to those we are examining. In addition, we examine the 18-fold increase, between the 1970s and the present, in the ratio of stock market trading relative to productive investment spending by U.S. nonfinancial corporations. This sharp rise in stock market trading as a share of productive investments has not been associated with any growth in productive investments themselves. Working from this evidence, we conclude that a U.S. FTT, which should bring a fall in stock market trading relative to productive investment spending, should not, on balance, produce significant negative effects on productive investments.
view more2013-04-15
Herndon, Ash and Pollin replicate Reinhart and Rogoff and find that coding errors, selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of summary statistics lead to serious errors that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced economies in the post-war period. They find that when properly calculated, the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public-debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -0:1 percent as published in Reinhart and Rogoff. That is, contrary to RR, average GDP growth at public debt/GDP ratios over 90 percent is not dramatically different than when debt/GDP ratios are lower.
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