I recently completed my Ph.D. in economics at the University of Notre Dame. I specialize in macroeconomics and international
economics. My research uses DSGE and Time Series models to study how global shocks influence
macroeconomic conditions in emerging and developing
economies.
I am on the job market during the 2025-2026 academic year. My Job
Market Paper analyzes the role of commodity import and export price shocks as a source
of business cycle fluctuations in
emerging and developing economies.
Email: samsonmboueke@gmail.com
Curriculum Vitae: [PDF]
Job Market Paper
"The Importance of Commodity-Price Shocks"
This paper analyzes the role of commodity import and export price shocks as a
source of business cycle fluctuations in 28 emerging market and developing economies
(EMDEs). Assuming that commodity prices are exogenous to these economies, I take
both an empirical and a theoretical approach, and examine whether the two can be
reconciled. First, I estimate country-specific SVARs and find that commodity import
and export price shocks account for, on average, 26–30% of business cycle fluctuations.
I then extend Schmitt-Groh´e and Uribe’s (2018) Importable-Exportable-Nontradable (MXN)
model by explicitly introducing commodity import and export prices. Key parameters of this
extended model are estimated by matching impulse responses from the country-specific SVARs.
The model predicts that, on average, the shocks explain only 2–3% of business cycle fluctuations
in the sample economies. Beyond this aggregate disconnect, a country-by-country comparison
reveals that the empirical and theoretical models are also disconnected at the country level.
Short Abstract: This paper examines the role of commodity import and export price shocks in driving business cycles in 28 emerging and developing economies, showing that an SVAR attributes roughly 26-30 percent of aggregate fluctuations to these shocks, whereas a new calibrated RBC model predicts only 2-3 percent.
Short Abstract: This paper attempts to develop an R package that generalizes and extends the strategy in Berg, Curtis, and Mark (2023) for shrinking impulse‐response standard errors in local projections. By doing so, it avoids the strong homogeneity restrictions imposed by traditional panel regressions.
Short Abstract: Using a global VAR, this paper analyzes how war-driven spikes in food, oil, and fertilizer prices affect commodity terms of trade, inflation, output, and real exchange rates in 44 African countries, predicting prolonged adverse impacts and highlighting Africa’s vulnerability to global shocks and its need for greater self-sufficiency.
Short Abstract: This project examines optimal monetary policy responses to commodity terms‐of‐trade shocks in commodity‐dependent low‐income countries within monetary unions (e.g., WAEMU and CEMAC) that do not have freely floating exchange rates.