Benjamin Moll | |
---|---|
Born | June 29, 1983 |
Nationality | German |
Academic career | |
Field | Macroeconomics |
Institution | London School of Economics |
Alma mater | University of Chicago (Ph.D., 2010) University College London (B.Sc., 2005) |
Influences | Robert M. Townsend; Robert E. Lucas, Jr.; Abhijit Banerjee |
Contributions | HANK; Continuous-time methods |
Awards | Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2016); Best European macroeconomist under the age of 40, Bernacer prize (2017); Leverhulme Prize (2019); Economics in Central Banking Award (2019) |
Benjamin Moll (born June 29, 1983) is a German macroeconomist who is the Sir John Hicks Chair and Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. [1] He is the recipient of the 2017 Bernacer Prize for his "path-breaking contributions to incorporate consumer and firm heterogeneity into macroeconomic models and use such models to study rich interactions between inequality and the macroeconomy". [2]
Benjamin Moll earned a BSc in economics from University College London in 2005, followed by a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 2010, under the supervision of Robert Townsend, Fernando Alvarez, Francisco Buera and Robert Lucas. After his PhD, he joined Princeton University where he was an Assistant Professor from 2011 to 2017, Associate Professor from 2017 to 2018, and Professor from 2018 to 2019. In 2019, he moved to the London School of Economics. [3]
In his earlier work, Moll showed that an important driving factor in determining the aggregate effects of poorly functioning credit markets is the persistence of idiosyncratic productivity shocks hitting producers. Higher persistence leads to smaller steady-state productivity losses and slower transition dynamics. He later reveals with David Lagakos, Tommaso Porzio, Nancy Qian and Todd Schoellman that wages increase twice as much with experience in rich countries compared to poor countries, supporting the claim that human capital accumulation plays a significant role in explaining cross-country income differences. [4]
In 2018, Moll together with Greg Kaplan and Gianluca Violante coin the term HANK (Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian) model to describe the rising literature incorporating household heterogeneity into New-Keynesian models. They argue that monetary policy operates mostly via general equilibrium effects on the labor market, instead of the standard intertemporal substitution channel. This is due to a sizable share of households exhibiting high MPCs, whose spending behavior reacts strongly to changes in disposable income. As Ricardian equivalence fails in HANK models, the reaction of the fiscal authority to a monetary shock is key to determine the overall macroeconomic response. [5]
Moll developed and popularized a number of continuous-time methods for solving heterogeneous agent models. Together with mathematicians Yves Achdou, Jiequn Han, Jean-Michel Lasry, and Pierre-Louis Lions, he recasts general equilibrium models in continuous time using mean-field game theory. The standard Aiyagari model is boiled down to a system of two main equations: a Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation associated with the optimal decision of the household, and an associated Fokker–Planck equation (Kolmogorov forward equation) governing the dynamics of the wealth distribution. This recasting allows for analytic solutions when the model is parsimonious enough. Moll and his coauthors popularized finite difference methods for solving numerically those continuous time models, which allows for gains in speed compared to discrete time models. [6]
Keynesian economics are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand strongly influences economic output and inflation. In the Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy. It is influenced by a host of factors that sometimes behave erratically and impact production, employment, and inflation.
Macroeconomics is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. This includes national, regional, and global economies. Macroeconomists study topics such as output/GDP and national income, unemployment, price indices and inflation, consumption, saving, investment, energy, international trade, and international finance.
The IS–LM model, or Hicks–Hansen model, is a two-dimensional macroeconomic model which is used as a pedagogical tool in macroeconomic teaching. The IS–LM model shows the relationship between interest rates and output in the short run in a closed economy. The intersection of the "investment–saving" (IS) and "liquidity preference–money supply" (LM) curves illustrates a "general equilibrium" where supposed simultaneous equilibria occur in both the goods and the money markets. The IS–LM model shows the importance of various demand shocks on output and consequently offers an explanation of changes in national income in the short run when prices are fixed or sticky. Hence, the model can be used as a tool to suggest potential levels for appropriate stabilisation policies. It is also used as a building block for the demand side of the economy in more comprehensive models like the AD–AS model.
New Keynesian economics is a school of macroeconomics that strives to provide microeconomic foundations for Keynesian economics. It developed partly as a response to criticisms of Keynesian macroeconomics by adherents of new classical macroeconomics.
This aims to be a complete article list of economics topics:
A macroeconomic model is an analytical tool designed to describe the operation of the problems of economy of a country or a region. These models are usually designed to examine the comparative statics and dynamics of aggregate quantities such as the total amount of goods and services produced, total income earned, the level of employment of productive resources, and the level of prices.
Ricardo A. M. R. Reis is a Portuguese economist currently the A. W. Phillips professor of economics at the London School of Economics. He works in macroeconomics, finance, and international economics and won the 2021 Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation medal awarded every two years by the European Economic Association for best economist under the age of 45. He writes a weekly op-ed for the Portuguese newspaper Expresso.
In economics, an agent is an actor in a model of some aspect of the economy. Typically, every agent makes decisions by solving a well- or ill-defined optimization or choice problem.
Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium modeling is a macroeconomic method which is often employed by monetary and fiscal authorities for policy analysis, explaining historical time-series data, as well as future forecasting purposes. DSGE econometric modelling applies general equilibrium theory and microeconomic principles in a tractable manner to postulate economic phenomena, such as economic growth and business cycles, as well as policy effects and market shocks.
Microfoundations are an effort to understand macroeconomic phenomena in terms of economic agents' behaviors and their interactions. Research in microfoundations explores the link between macroeconomic and microeconomic principles in order to explore the aggregate relationships in macroeconomic models.
The neoclassical synthesis (NCS), or neoclassical–Keynesian synthesis is an academic movement and paradigm in economics that worked towards reconciling the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Keynes in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) with neoclassical economics.
New classical macroeconomics, sometimes simply called new classical economics, is a school of thought in macroeconomics that builds its analysis entirely on a neoclassical framework. Specifically, it emphasizes the importance of rigorous foundations based on microeconomics, especially rational expectations.
The Bernacer Prize is awarded annually to European young economists who have made outstanding contributions in the fields of macroeconomics and finance. The prize is named after Germán Bernácer, an early Spanish macroeconomist.
Frank Horace Hahn FBA was a British economist whose work focused on general equilibrium theory, monetary theory, Keynesian economics and critique of monetarism. A famous problem of economic theory, the conditions under which money, which is intrinsically worthless, can have a positive value in a general equilibrium, is called "Hahn's problem" after him. One of Hahn's main abiding concerns was the understanding of Keynesian (Non-Walrasian) outcomes in general equilibrium situations.
Macroeconomic theory has its origins in the study of business cycles and monetary theory. In general, early theorists believed monetary factors could not affect real factors such as real output. John Maynard Keynes attacked some of these "classical" theories and produced a general theory that described the whole economy in terms of aggregates rather than individual, microeconomic parts. Attempting to explain unemployment and recessions, he noticed the tendency for people and businesses to hoard cash and avoid investment during a recession. He argued that this invalidated the assumptions of classical economists who thought that markets always clear, leaving no surplus of goods and no willing labor left idle.
Real business-cycle theory is a class of new classical macroeconomics models in which business-cycle fluctuations are accounted for by real shocks. Unlike other leading theories of the business cycle, RBC theory sees business cycle fluctuations as the efficient response to exogenous changes in the real economic environment. That is, the level of national output necessarily maximizes expected utility, and governments should therefore concentrate on long-run structural policy changes and not intervene through discretionary fiscal or monetary policy designed to actively smooth out economic short-term fluctuations.
Stock-flow consistent models (SFC) are a family of macroeconomic models based on a rigorous accounting framework, that seeks to guarantee a correct and comprehensive integration of all the flows and the stocks of an economy. These models were first developed in the mid-20th century but have recently become popular, particularly within the post-Keynesian school of thought. Stock-flow consistent models are in contrast to dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models, which are used in mainstream economics.
Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé is a German economist who has been a professor of economics at Columbia University since 2008. Her research focuses on macroeconomics, fiscal policy, and monetary policy in open and closed economies. In 2004, she was awarded the Bernácer Prize, for her research on monetary stabilization policies.
Gianluca Violante is a professor of economics at Princeton University whose research interests span macroeconomics, labor economics, and public finance. He received the 2019 Central Banking Prize for Economics in Central Banking for his work on HANK models.
Greg Kaplan is the Alvin H. Baum Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. His research encompasses macroeconomics, labor economics and applied microeconomics, with a focus on distributional issues.
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