Salomé Fofana
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About
Salomé is a PhD Economics candidate in the Department of Economics. Her main research interests are macroeconomics, behavioural and public economics.
Salomé is on the job market in 2026/27.
Her work focuses on the formation of households’ expectations, uncertainty, and their implications for aggregate economy and policy-making.
Salomé holds an MSc in Economics from École Polytechnique, and a Master’s degree ('Grande Ecole') from HEC Paris.
Supervisor
Ricardo Reis
Jonathon Hazell
Research
Publications
Household Disagreement about Expected Inflation, with Paula Patzelt and Ricardo Reis.
June 2025. In Research Handbook of Inflation (Edward Elgar Publishing), edited by Guido Ascari and Riccardo Trezzi. Chapter 15.
Abstract: This paper surveys the major facts from research on disagreement between households on what they expect inflation to be. We document them using figures and correlations that capture: the statistical regularities on the observable drivers of disagreement, the measurement of residual disagreement, the usefulness of disagreement to forecast inflation, the response of disagreement to shocks, the disagreement between households and professionals, and the relation between disagreement, risk, and uncertainty.
Working papers
Polarizing Time Preferences: the Ambivalent Role of Uncertainty in Precautionary Savings. Current version: November 2025.
Abstract: This paper shows that uncertainty reshapes how households value the future. In a survey experiment in the United Kingdom, exogenous increases in subjective income uncertainty polarize time preferences: forward-looking individuals become more forward-looking, while short-sighted individuals become more short-sighted. This divergence translates into saving behavior, with strong positive responses to uncertainty among the forward-looking offset by muted or negative responses among the short-sighted. A model in which uncertainty raises the cost of forward-looking attention rationalizes this pattern. The results highlight behavioural sensitivity to uncertainty as a central determinant of households' heterogenous responses to risk, and help explain why precautionary saving motives appears weak on aggregate in the data.
Empty vessels make the most noise: "don't know" answers in household expectations surveys. Unpublished manuscript. Current version: March 2024.
Abstract: This paper explores the meaning of “don’t know” (DK/NA) responses in household expectations surveys, and how their treatment can affect inferences. Using primarily the Michigan Survey of Consumers (MSC), I find that: (i) DK/NAs capture not only high uncertainty, but also a lack of knowledge and understanding, as well as other behavioral traits; (ii) Answering “don’t know” is much more prevalent among women, low education, low income and older households, making them more impacted than others by the deletion of DK/NA responses, and entailing concerns about a distortion of sample weights when doing so; (iii) Sample selection concerns arise when the socio-economic characteristics correlated with a higher propensity to answer “don’t know” are also correlated with the values of expectations, which is the case for inflation expectations, as confirmed by both my imputation method on MSC data and a natural experiment offered by the Bank of England/Ipsos Inflation Attitudes Survey. This leads to a negative bias in reported average expected inflation expectations; (iv) Multiple imputation offers new insights about expectations formation by including DK/NAs in statistical analysis.
Work in progress
The “uncertainty trap”: does greater subjective uncertainty about economic outlooks reinforce inequalities?