Benjamin Born

ifo/CESifo Visiting Researcher

Benjamin Born, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, CESifo Guest from 22 to 27 November 2021.

Shocks, Frictions, and Inequality in US Business Cycles

In this recent study, Benjamin Born, together with his coauthors Christian Bayer and Ralph Luetticke, investigate the extent to which inequality matters for the business cycle and vice versa. Using a Bayesian approach, the authors estimate a heterogeneous-agent New-Keynesian (HANK) model with incomplete markets and portfolio choice between liquid and illiquid assets. Even when the model is estimated on aggregate data only and with only a set of shocks and frictions along the lines of Smets and Wouters (2007), it reproduces observed US inequality dynamics. In other words, the model is successful in simultaneously accounting for cycle and distribution. Output stabilization via monetary or fiscal policy also stabilizes inequality.

Benjamin Born’s research interests lie mainly in macroeconomics, with a focus on fiscal and monetary policy, heterogeneous agents and business cycles, and his work has been published in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Economic Journal.

During his stay in Munich, Benjamin Born plans to interact closely with the researchers at the ifo Center for Macroeconomics and Surveys, providing both general research advice for junior researchers and advancing joint projects. One project that Mr. Born plans to work on while at ifo/CESifo analyzes how firms adjust their expectations as new information arrives. The project is in collaboration with a doctoral student at the ifo Institute and uses the ifo Business Climate survey data.

Benjamin Born is an Associate Professor of Macroeconomics at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, affiliated with CEPR and is a CESifo Research Network Fellow. In addition, he serves as Research Director at the ifo Institute’s Center for Macroeconomics and Surveys and as an Associate Editor at the European Economic Review. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Bonn.