Monica DiLeo

Postdoctoral researcher in political economy at the Hertie School

Central banking and politics

Email m.dileo@hertie-school.org
Address Berlin, DE

about

BIO

I am a postdoctoral research fellow on KnowLegPo, a joint DFG-ANR funded research project led by Benjamin Braun (London School of Economics) and Matthias Thiemann (Sciences Po) devoted to examining how central banks have navigated policymaking in an increasingly contested and politicized context.

I am also a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Transition Expertise (CETEx).

Prior to this, I completed my PhD in Political Economy at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. My thesis examined the politics of central banking and policy approaches to climate change in the West and East Asia.

I also worked as a Senior Analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and earned my Bachelor of Arts at Yale University.

Please feel free to download my cv (upper right).

RESEARCH

Journal Articles:

“A less reluctant (green) Atlas? Explaining the People’s Bank of China’s distinctive environmental shift”, with Eric Helleiner and Hongying Wang, New Political Economy, 2025. Available open access here.

"Financial technocrats as competitive regime creators: The founding and design of the Network for Greening the Financial System”, with Eric Helleiner and Jens van ‘t Klooster, Regulation & Governance, 2024. Available open access here.

“Climate policy at the Bank of England: The possibilities and limits of green central banking”, Climate Policy, 2023. Available open access here.

“Why the Fed and ECB parted ways on climate change: The politics of divergence in the global central banking community”, with Glenn Rudebusch and Jens van ‘t Klooster. Brookings Institution, Hutchins Center Working Paper No. 88, 2023. Available here. Forthcoming, British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

Reports

"A framework for central banks navigating political uncertainty in the transition". London School of Economics Centre for Economic Transition Expertise, 2025. Available here.

Short pieces

"Political Uncertainty in Central Bank Responses to Climate Change", Just Money, 2024. Available here / pdf.

"Climate Divergence", Phenomenal World, 2023. Available here.

PhD Dissertation

The Politics of Central Bank Approaches to Climate Change in East Asia and the West, June 2024.

WORKS IN PROGRESS

Selected:

"Fear of full employment: Labor and inflation at the Fed", with Benjamin Braun and Jérôme Deyris .

Abstract: Does the delegation of monetary policy to independent central banks help grow the cake for all, or does it institutionalize a monetary order that allocates a larger slice to capital? At the heart of this debate lies the role of the labor market—both in central bankers' understanding of the inflationary process and in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. With its explicit dual mandate, the Federal Reserve is a pivotal test case. We measure Fed policymakers’ understanding of the labor market as a driver of inflation via LLM-assisted text classification methods, applied to the complete corpus of Fed communications during the period 1970-2020. Our results show a robust negative relationship between the rate of unemployment and the salience of labor as a driver of inflation. Crucially, we find that policymakers are much more reactive in internal FOMC deliberations (compared to public speeches), and under Democratic presidents compared to Republicans. Rather than a ‘rhetorical Phillip’s curve’, our findings thus indicate to a genuine ‘fear of full employment’ among monetary policymakers.

Others:

"Central bank legitimacy beyond independence".

"The political uncertainty of central banking".

“Interests and prices: The Federal Reserve and the causes of inflation (1970-2023)”, with Benjamin Braun, Jérôme Deyris, and Matthias Thiemann.

“Fiscal politics and central banking”, with Benjamin Braun, Jérôme Deyris, and Matthias Thiemann.

“Locked into complexity: Path dependency and German Off-Balance Sheet Fiscal Agencies”, with Andrei Guter-Sandu, Armin Haas, and Steffen Murau.

“Technocracy for realists – a Schumpeterian theory of independent central banking”, with Jens van ‘t Klooster.

TEACHING

University of Queensland

School of Political Science and International Studies:

Economic Analysis and Public Policy (master’s course), Fall 2021, 2022.
Globalization, International Political Economy and Development (master’s course), Spring 2021.
Politics and the Economy (undergraduate course), Spring 2020.