Benjamin Moll
Publications, working papers
and work in progress
Working Papers
with Mark Aguiar and Florian Scheuer
revise & resubmit, Econometrica
Slides, Online Appendix, Twitter summary thread
Media: New York Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Marginal Revolution
with Andreas Fagereng, Martin Holm and Gisle Natvik
revise & resubmit, Review of Economic Studies
Publications
Recurrent Structural Policy Gradient for Partially Observable Mean Field Games
Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning, 2026, spotlight paper
with Clarisse Wibault, Johannes Forkel, Sebastian Towers, Tiphaine Wibault, Juan Duque, George Whittle, Andreas Schaab, Yucheng Yang, Chiyuan Wang, Maike Osborne, and Jakob Foerster
Mean Field Games without Rational Expectations
Communications in Contemporary Mathematics, Special Issue in Memory of Haïm Brezis, 2026
with Lenya Ryzhik
A Simple Mapping from MPCs to MPXs
Journal of Finance: Insights and Perspectives, accepted
with David Laibson and Peter Maxted
Journal of Political Economy, 2025
Original March 2022 version, Deutsche Version, Small correction, Reception by Chancellor Scholz
Slides, Video (Markus Academy), Video (Hoover), Latest version of Appendix, Supplement on Substitution, Review of other studies, Nontechnical summary (VoxEU), Replication materials, Follow-up paper for French CEA
Media: Zeit, NY Times I (Krugman), NY Times II (Krugman), FAZ, Süddeutsche, Spiegel, Handelsblatt I, Handelsblatt II, Chartbook (Tooze), Financial Times (Wolf), Guardian, Bild (Banerjee-Duflo interview), ARD Monitor, Economist (Leader), Economist (Free Exchange), FAZ (Geht doch)
Shorter versions: Kiel Policy Brief in English, Kiel Policy Brief auf Deutsch
Present Bias Amplifies the Household Balance-Sheet Channels of Macroeconomic Policy
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2024
with David Laibson and Peter Maxted
The Power of Substitution: the Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2023
with Moritz Schularick and Georg Zachmann
Focusing on gas storage levels distracts from what really matters: using less gas
Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, 2022
Comment on Bartscher, Kuhn, Schularick and Wachtel (2022) “Monetary Policy and Racial Inequality”
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2022
Uneven Growth: Automation’s Impact on Income and Wealth Inequality
Econometrica, 2022
with Lukasz Rachel and Pascual Restrepo
Online Appendix, Slides, Replication Materials (right-click to download)
Hard-to-find reference: Meade (1964)
One-picture summary of our main argument (courtesy of David Hémous)
Income and Wealth Distribution in Macroeconomics: A Continuous-Time Approach
Review of Economic Studies, 2022
with Yves Achdou, Jiequn Han, Jean-Michel Lasry and Pierre-Louis Lions
Supersedes earlier version “Heterogeneous Agent Models in Continuous Time”
Online Appendix, Slides
Online Appendix D “Viscosity Solutions for Dummies”, Replication Materials
Website with codes for numerical solution (how to solve the stationary equilibrium of a Bewley model in Matlab in a quarter second)
Comment on Hubmer, Krusell and Smith (2020) “Sources of U.S. Wealth Inequality: Past, Present, and Future”
NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 2021
A Further Look at the Propagation of Monetary Policy Shocks in HANK
Journal of Money Credit and Banking, 2020
with Felipe Alves, Greg Kaplan and Gianluca Violante
Optimal Development Policies with Financial Frictions
Econometrica, 2019
with Oleg Itskhoki
VoxEU column: “Subsidizing Growth”
Appendix A, Appendix B
Also available as NBER Working Paper 19994
Monetary Policy According to HANK
American Economic Review, 2018
with Greg Kaplan and Gianluca Violante
Online Appendix, Slides, Video, Podcast, HANK literature in one slide, Replication Materials, Computational Algorithm
Also available as NBER Working Paper 21897
Supplement: A Note on Unconventional Monetary Policy in HANK
Nontechnical summary in IMF F&D Magazine: “The Very Model of Modern Monetary Policy”
Media: NY Times, Financial Times
When Inequality Matters for Macro and Macro Matters for Inequality
NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 2018
with SeHyoun Ahn, Greg Kaplan, Tom Winberry and Christian Wolf
with David Lagakos, Tommaso Porzio, Nancy Qian and Todd Schoellman
Slides
supersedes earlier version “Experience Matters” (NBER Working Paper 18602)
data for experience-wage profiles in Figures 1 and 2
Life-Cycle Human Capital Accumulation Across Countries: Lessons From U.S. Immigrants
Journal of Human Capital, Special Issue in Honor of Gary Becker, 2018
with David Lagakos, Tommaso Porzio, Nancy Qian and Todd Schoellman
data for experience-wage profiles in Figures 1 and 2
Social Optima in Economies with Heterogeneous Agents
Review of Economic Dynamics, 2017
with Galo Nuño
The Dynamics of Inequality
Econometrica, 2016
with Xavier Gabaix, Jean-Michel Lasry and Pierre-Louis Lions
Online Appendix, Online Appendix 2, Slides
Appendix E: The Dynamics of Wealth Inequality
Also available as NBER Working Paper 21363
Related, just for fun: Pareto’s 1896 formulation of his distribution
(see bottom/top p.304/305, eq (1), eq top of p.306. Pages from “Cours d’économie politique”)
PDE Models in Macroeconomics
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 2014,
themed issue on “PDE Models in the Socio-Economic Sciences”
with Yves Achdou, Francisco J. Buera, Jean-Michel Lasry and Pierre-Louis Lions
Economists may want to read this version with more economist-friendly notation.
Related and hard-to-find reference: Kolmogorov, Petrovskii and Piskunov (1937) (Ch.6 in this book)
Aggregate Implications of a Credit Crunch: The Importance of Heterogeneity
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2015
with Francisco J. Buera
Productivity Losses from Financial Frictions: Can Self-financing Undo Capital Misallocation?
American Economic Review, 2014
Online Appendix
Extra Appendix 1: The Model in Discrete Time and with iid Shocks
Extra Appendix 2: Closed Form Solution of a Neoclassical Growth Model with Capitalists and Workers
MATLAB code for computing transition dynamics described in Appendix C
Job market paper version (October 2010)
Knowledge Growth and the Allocation of Time
Journal of Political Economy, 2014
with Robert E. Lucas, Jr.
MATLAB codes for computing Balanced Growth Paths described in Section 3
Well-Intended Policies
Review of Economic Dynamics, Special Issue on Misallocation, 2013
with Francisco J. Buera and Yongseok Shin
Why Does Misallocation Persist?
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2010
with Abhijit Banerjee