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Centre for Economic Policy Research

Joint ECB/CEPR Workshop on household heterogeneity in macroeconomics

17-18 December 2018, Frankfurt am Main

The European Central Bank’s Directorate General Research and Directorate General Economics, together with the CEPR, will hold a workshop on household heterogeneity in macroeconomics in Frankfurt am Main on 17 and 18 December 2018.

Before the financial crisis, most macroeconomic models were based on a single representative agent. However, the Great Recession has shown that it is extremely important to consider agents’ heterogeneity and changes in households’ income and wealth distribution when addressing key features of the data and the impact of policy on economic welfare.

During this workshop we will focus on improving our understanding of how monetary policy and other economic policies affect the economy when realistic levels of heterogeneity across households and firms are acknowledged. Studying monetary models with heterogeneous agents more closely could help us shed new light on these aspects of the monetary transmission mechanism. More broadly, it is important for policymakers to understand and monitor the effects of macroeconomic policies on different groups within the economy.

This workshop provides a forum for theoretical and applied research and focuses on the interaction between household heterogeneity and macroeconomic developments. It will benefit from the confirmed participation of leading academics in the field, such as Wouter Den Haan, Per Krusell, Victor Rios-Rull and Giovanni Violante.

The organisers encourage submissions in the following broad areas:

• household heterogeneity and the monetary transmission mechanism
• household consumption, saving and portfolio choice
• the housing market, mortgages and aggregate shocks
• the distributional consequences of monetary policy, both conventional and unconventional
• methods for solving models with heterogeneous agents

The workshop is not limited to the topics listed above; submissions from all areas of macroeconomics are welcome.

Submissions

Authors interested in taking part are invited to submit their papers to Workshop.Heterogeneity.Macroeconomic.Models@ecb.europa.eu. The deadline for submitting the extended abstract or completed draft (strongly preferred) of the paper is 20 September 2018. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by 31 October 2018.

Expenses

The travel and accommodation expenses of all attendees, presenters of accepted papers and discussants are to be covered by their own ESCB entity or EU or international financial institution. Attendance costs for participants from academic institutions may be reimbursed by the organisers on request. No conference fees will be charged.

Attending the workshop

The invitation to attend the workshop is extended to members of any EU or international financial institution (e.g. the Bank for International Settlements, the Federal Reserve System and the International Monetary Fund) working on topics related to the content of the workshop. Owing to restrictions on space, however, places will be limited to one participant per institution (not including those presenting papers).

Organising committee

• Wouter Den Haan (London School of Economics and Centre for Economic Policy Research)
• Katrin Assenmacher (European Central Bank)
• Maarten Dossche (European Central Bank)
• Luca Onorante (European Central Bank)
• Diego Rodriguez Palenzuela (European Central Bank)
• Jirka Slacalek (European Central Bank)