Marta Cota

Hi! I am a tenure track Assistant Professor at the  Finance Department at Nova SBE in Lisbon. I hold a Ph.D. degree in Economics from CERGE-EI.

My research interests lie between Macroeconomics and Household Finance. I develop structural models that encompass individual expectation heterogeneity and heterogeneity in search frictions. 

My CV is linked here.                      

Working papers:

     Financial Skills and Search in the Mortgage Market (joint work with Ante Sterc) - (SSRN link)

Borrowers with similar repayment capacity pay different mortgage rates, and the least sophisticated pay the most. We explain this dispersion with a model in which financial skill lowers the cost of search and search raises the return to skill, a complementarity we characterize analytically and discipline with the Survey of Consumer Finances, where skill with search lowers rates by 12 basis points. Cheaper search alone draws low-skill borrowers into ownership and raises their distress; financial education reverses this, and the combination exceeds their sum. Because the value of search moves with rates, rate changes transmit unevenly across the skill distribution.

Recipient of the Financial Literacy Research Award for the best submitted paper at the 2026 Stanford Financial Education Symposium

Recipient of the 2024 Inaugural Award in Memory of Ashot Mkrtchyan by Central Bank of Armenia

Is Knowledge Enough? Financial Literacy, Marriage, and Gender Differences in Wealth , joint with Marta Morazzoni,  Maria Frech and Michael Tallent (submitted)

This paper studies whether financial literacy shapes gender differences in wealth. Using data from the United States and the Netherlands, we document that women have lower financial literacy and confidence than men, are less likely to manage long-term investments within their households, and hold fewer financial assets, with the largest gaps among married agents. We build a life-cycle portfolio-choice model with endogenous financial literacy accumulation and marital dynamics centered around two wedges: a higher cost of literacy investment for married women and gender-specific perceived returns on risky assets. The calibrated model qualitatively matches untargeted life-cycle patterns in literacy and portfolio choice, accounting for a third of the gender gap  in individual financial assets. Counterfactual exercises show that early-life financial education can narrow the gender knowledge gap, and portfolio-allocation rules may offset confidence and marriage-related wedges that education may not undo, lowering the wealth gap by 6%.

Published work:

Extrapolative Expectations and Retirement Savings - The Review of Finance,  July 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/rof/rfaf021 

Work in progress:

"Social Sorting and the Refinancing Channel of Monetary Policy", joint with Mauro Mastrogiaccomo and Ante Sterc

"Retirement Savings and Self-Employment in an Ageing Economy ", with Marta Morazzoni