Welcome to my webpage!

I am a 6th year economics PhD student at ETH Zurich and KOF Swiss Economic Institute. My work thematically focuses on belief formation of economic agents with a particular interest in macroeconomics and monetary policy. Methodologically, I have always been interested in leveraging unstructured data methods such as NLP and more recently LLMs (you guessed it) to extract signal from atypical datasets.

At KOF I have the role of domain expert "monetary policy and consumer prices". This entails preparing the inflation, interest rate and exchange rate forecasts for the Swiss economy for the KOF quarterly forecasts.

Contact

Email: perakis[at]kof.ethz.ch

Links: Google Scholar

Research

Working Papers

Seeing and Hearing is Believing: The Role of Audiovisual Communication in Shaping Inflation Expectations
With Elliott Ash, Heiner Mikosch, and Samad Sarferaz
Last updated: May 2024 • R&R at European Economic Review
► Show Abstract
This paper presents novel causal evidence on the effect of different communication channels employed by central banks on people's expectations about future inflation. In a pre-registered randomized survey experiment among a representative household sample, we examine adjustment of inflation expectations when confronted with a press conference statement by the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) articulating the bank's commitment to its 2% inflation target. We show that the medium of communication matters, holding the content of the message constant: Relative to a text transcript, audiovisual mediums strengthen updating toward the inflation target, with dynamic mediums (audio and video) being more effective than static mediums (photo). In a Bayesian updating framework, we find that audiovisual communication increases the signal gain as compared to textual communication, i.e., respondents put more weight on the information they receive. We also show that economically less-informed households (those consuming less economic news) are more responsive in updating to audiovisual mediums. Overall, our results suggest that central bank messages aimed directly at the public can help to anchor inflation expectations.

Work in Progress

Tariff Shocks and Firm Decisions
With Klaus Abberger, Arbërim Bibaj, Alexander Rathke, Samad Sarferaz, and Kieran Walsh
Draft coming soon!
Decoding the Secular Stagnation Puzzle
With Samad Sarferaz and Martin Wörter
Draft coming soon!

Policy Reports

Prognose 2025/2026/2027 US-Zölle prägen die Schweizer Wirtschaft
KOF Institut • Herbst 2025
Der vorliegende Beitrag dokumentiert die Ergebnisse der Herbstprognose 2025 des KOF Instituts der ETH Zürich vom 24. September 2025.
Prognose 2025 / 2026 Im Bann der US-Zölle: Handelskonflikte prägen die globale Konjunktur
KOF Institut • Sommer 2025
Prognose 2024 / 2025 / 2026 Schweizer Wirtschaft im Spannungsfeld: Handelskonflikt versus Fiskalimpuls
KOF Institut • Frühjahr 2025
Prognose 2024 / 2025 / 2026 Gedämpfte europäische Konjunktur belastet Schweizer Aussichten
KOF Institut • Winter 2024
Prognose 2024 / 2025 / 2026 Ausbleibender Aufschwung in Europa trübt Perspektiven der Schweizer Wirtschaft
KOF Institut • Herbst 2024
Prognose 2024 / 2025 Erholung in Europa stützt Schweizer Wirtschaf
KOF Institut • Sommer 2024
Prognose 2024 / 2025 Globale Konjunkturschwäche hemmt Schweizer Wirtschaft
KOF Institut • Frühjahr 2024
Konjunkturanalyse: Prognose 2024 / 2025 Schweizer Wirtschaft im Sog der internationalen Konjunkturschwäche
KOF Institut • Winter 2023
Konjunkturanalyse: Prognose 2024 / 2025. Schweizer Konjunktur: Binnenwirtschaft stützt – Aussenhandel schwächelt
KOF Institut • Herbst 2023
Konjunkturanalyse: Prognose 2023 / 2024. Starke Beschäftigung trifft auf stockende Wirtschaft
KOF Institut • Sommer 2023