Benjamin Moll

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.

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.

Benjamin Moll (born June 29, 1983) is a German macroeconomist who is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. 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".