Carl Menger Award 2024

Every two years at its Annual Conference, the Verein für Socialpolitik (VfS) awards the Carl Menger Prize for innovative international research achievements in the fields of monetary macroeconomics, monetary policy and currency policy.

The Carl Menger Prize, named after the Austrian economist and co-founder of the Austrian School, is jointly sponsored by the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Swiss National Bank and is endowed with 20,000 euros.

The Carl Menger Prize winner for 2024 is Benjamin Moll (LSE). Benjamin Moll is a German economist. After completing his doctorate at the University of Chicago, he was initially a professor at Princeton. In 2019, he moved to the London School of Economics.

Why are some countries so much poorer than others? And why do differences at the micro level, especially in the distribution of income and wealth, fuel macroeconomic problems? These questions have always driven Benjamin Moll and are the mainspring of his research. With his contributions, he shapes the dialogue between science and the public and actively participates in economic policy debates at home and abroad as a valued advisor.
Much of today's inflation is not well understood. Why are some households seriously harmed while others barely feel the effects of inflation and perhaps even benefit from it? The changing goals of monetary policy further complicate the understanding of inflation. Monetary policy has long focused on controlling inflation by stabilising aggregate demand. More recently, however, central banks have broadened their objectives to include financial stability, climate and geopolitical risks and social concerns.

Benjamin Moll is one of the most respected macroeconomists in Europe. Together with Greg Kaplan and Gianluca Violante, he coined the term ‘HANK’ models in 2018. He used it to describe the growing variety of economic studies that include heterogeneous households in New Keynesian models. HANK models provide new insights into redistribution and the heterogeneous effects of monetary policy and shed new light on the traditional goals of central banks - inflation control and output stabilisation.

Benjamin Moll has already won many prizes in his academic career to date, including the Economics in Central Banking Award for ‘Monetary Policy According to HANK’ (2019), the Leverhulme Prize (2019), the Bernácer Prize for best European economist under 40 working in macroeconomics and finance (2018) and the Banque de France TSE Prize in Monetary Economics and Finance (2022). In 2020, he was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant.
He was and is co-editor of numerous renowned journals, including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies and the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics.

‘Benjamin Moll has established himself as one of the leading voices in modern economics. His work is characterised by a remarkable combination of theoretical depth and practical relevance. He has understood how to penetrate complex economic issues and develop innovative approaches that both enrich the academic debate and provide valuable impetus for monetary policy,’ lauded Falko Fecht (Deutsche Bundesbank).

The Carl Menger Award is endowed with 20,000 euros and is sponsored by the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Swiss National Bank.