Tanisa Tawichsri, Ph.D.

About

I am a Principal Researcher at the Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research (PIER), Bank of Thailand. My research spans labor economics, public economics, and central bank topics such as inflation expectations and allocative efficiency — with a focus on developing economies.

I hold a Ph.D. in Economics from Arizona State University, with master's degrees in Statistics and Economics, and a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Washington University in St. Louis (Magna Cum Laude). Before joining PIER, I worked as a policy analyst at Thailand's National Economic and Social Development Board. I have taught at Arizona State University and served as a guest lecturer at Chulalongkorn University and a guest speaker at SEACEN.

My current projects study minimum wage impacts on earnings and worker sorting, firm-level inflation expectations, and the use of large language models for measuring news-based inflation expectations. My work sits at the boundary between academic research and policy.

Research Interests

Peer-Reviewed Publications

• Consumption responses and redistributive implications of luxury durable tax rebates
  Tanisa Tawichsri. Fiscal Studies, 2026.
  Published version · Working paper (PIER DP 99)

  Using a heterogeneous agent model estimated on Thai household data, I find that Thailand's first-car tax rebate program generated strong consumption responses concentrated among upper-income households — implying regressive distributional effects despite broad eligibility. The program also shifted asset composition toward durables, with potential unintended consequences for household saving.

• Misunderstood Differences: Perception, Media, and Out-Group Animosity in Thailand
  Tanisa Tawichsri, Thiti Tosborvorn, Suparit Suwanik, Boontida Sa-ngimnet, & Chonnakan Rittinon. Journal of East Asian Studies, 2025.
  Published version

  We examine how media and biased information fuel inter-group animosity in Thailand's political divide. Using a survey, we find that people vastly overestimate how much the two sides disagree on policy. Misperception of this policy gap is strongly correlated with out-group animosity — suggesting that correcting it could reduce hostility and improve social cohesion.

• Beyond administrative reports: A deep learning framework for classifying and monitoring crime and accidents leveraging large-scale online news
  Suppawong Tuarob, Phonarnun Tatiyamaneekul, Siripen Pongpaichet, Tanisa Tawichsri, & Thanapon Noraset. Neural Computing and Applications, 2025.
  Published version
• Forecasting national-level self-harm trends with social networks
  Suppawong Tuarob, Krittin Chatrinan, Thanapon Noraset, Tanisa Tawichsri, & Tipajin Thaipisutikul. IEEE Access, 11, 64796–64814, 2023.
  Published version
• Language-agnostic deep learning framework for automatic monitoring of population-level mental health from social networks
  Thanapon Noraset, Krittin Chatrinan, Tanisa Tawichsri, Tipajin Thaipisutikul, & Suppawong Tuarob. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 133, 2022.
  Published version

Selected Working Papers

• News-based inflation expectations: LLM-assisted measurement and forecasting
  Tanisa Tawichsri, Suppawong Tuarob, Nuwat Nookhwun, & Chinjuta Sa-ngasaeng. Working paper, 2026.
  PIER Discussion Paper 252

  We construct a news-based inflation expectations index for Thailand using topic modeling and fine-tuned BERT classification on 1.1 million Thai-language news articles from 2015–2024. The index leads both headline inflation and firm inflation expectations, and improves inflation forecasts by up to 32%, with price-specific topics driving short-term predictions and macroeconomic narratives dominating at longer horizons.

• Firm inflation expectations and the macroeconomy: Evidence from Thailand
  Pym Manopimoke, Nuwat Nookhwun, Tanaporn Sriklay, & Tanisa Tawichsri. Working paper, 2026.
  BIS ACC Conference Paper
• The minimum wage effects on earnings and sorting
  Suphanit Piyapromdee, Tanisa Tawichsri, & Nada Wasi. PIER Discussion Paper 222, 2026.
  PIER Discussion Paper 222

  We study Thailand's 2012–2013 minimum wage reform, which raised wage floors by over 40 percent, using matched employer-employee administrative data. We find earnings rise sharply at the bottom with spillovers well above the new minimum, while employment effects are modest. The reform also reshaped worker-firm sorting, with lower-wage workers advancing to higher-paying firms — improving lifetime earnings, though with some flattening of wage growth for mid-wage workers.

• Formal Labor Market Dynamics and Development
  Anne Brockmeyer, François Gerard, Gabriel Ulyssea, Linda Wu, Marcelo Bergolo, Rodrigo Ceni González, Benard Kirui, Andrea López-Luzuriaga, Leonardo Fabio Morales, Andrea Otero-Cortés, Nadine Riedel, Matías Tapia, Tanisa Tawichsri, & Verena Wiedemann. Working paper, 2026.

Selected Policy Briefs

• 2026 ย้อนมอง 16 ความคิดเพื่อชีวิตคนไทย: สำรวจความคืบหน้าและทางออกที่ต้องเร่งทำ
  Revisiting 16 Policy Ideas for Thailand: Progress and Remaining Reform Priorities. PIER aBRIDGEd.
• 2025 GenAI และ LLMs กับกระบวนการทำวิจัยทางเศรษฐศาสตร์
  Generative AI and Large Language Models in Economic Research Practice. PIER aBRIDGEd.
• 2024 บัตรคนจน ตอนที่ 1: บัตรคนจนคัดกรอง "คนจน" ได้ดีแค่ไหน?
  The Welfare Card Program (Part I): How Accurately Does It Target the Poor? PIER aBRIDGEd.
• 2024 หากปรับขึ้นค่าจ้างขั้นต่ำเป็น 400 บาทต่อวัน: กระทบใคร และกระทบอย่างไร
  Raising the Minimum Wage to 400 Baht per Day: Who Is Affected and How? PIER aBRIDGEd.

Media

• 2025 Longtun Man (LMTH) — "Minimum Wage and AI Jobs"

Employment

Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research, Bank of Thailand

National Accounts Office, National Economic and Social Development Board

Education

Teaching

Econometric Modelling and Forecasting II (Causal inference: IV and DID)

Slides: 📄 Lecture 1: Instrumental Variables  ·  📄 Lecture 2: Difference-in-Differences

Business Macroeconomics (Economic Growth Models)

Slides: 📄 Growth Model  ·  📄 Growth Model with Human Capital

Math Camp (for first-year Ph.D. students); Introduction to Microeconomics; Intermediate Microeconomics

Math Camp: 📄 Syllabus  ·  📄 Lecture Notes  ·  Problem Sets: 📄 Logic  ·  📄 Weierstrass  ·  📄 Concavity  ·  📄 Optimization

Intermediate Microeconomics: 📄 Syllabus

Public Economics; Intermediate Microeconomics; Introduction to Microeconomics

Skills

Curriculum Vitae

Full CV available for download below.