Benjamin Born

Professor of Macroeconomics

Institute for Macroeconomics & Econometrics

Benjamin Born is Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of Bonn and Research Director at the ifo Institute. His research spans business cycles, fiscal and monetary policy, heterogeneous‑agent macroeconomics, and household and firm expectations.

He is a Research Fellow at CEPR and CESifo and advises the European Central Bank (DG Economics) and the European Commission (DG ECFIN). He serves on the European Parliament’s Expert Group on Monetary Policy and the CEPR–EABCN Euro Area Business Cycle Dating Committee, and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Monetary Economics and the European Economic Review.

Current research/working papers

From Tweets to Transactions: High-Frequency Inflation Expectations, Consumption, and Stock Returns (with Nora Lamersdorf, Jana-Lynn Schuster, and Sascha Steffen), December 2025, CEPR Discussion Paper 20977.
The Impact of Interest: Firms' Investment Sensitivity to Interest Rates (with Lea Best and Manuel Menkhoff), October 2025, CEPR Discussion Paper 20695. Summary on VoxEU.
Firm Expectations and News: Micro v Macro (with Zeno Enders, Manuel Menkhoff, Gernot Müller, and Knut Niemann), October 2025, CEPR Discussion Paper 17768. Summary on VoxEU.
Different No More: Country Spreads in Advanced and Emerging Economies (with Gernot Müller, Johannes Pfeifer, and Susanne Wellmann), July 2025, CEPR Discussion Paper 14392. Journal of International Economics (revise & resubmit). Summary on VoxEU.
Anchored in Troubled Waters: Monetary Unions and Uncertainty (with Luis Huxel, Gernot Müller, and Johannes Pfeifer), April 2025, CEPR Discussion Paper 15579. Summary on VoxEU.
Who Feels the Boom? Labor Market Tightness and the Heterogeneous Employment Effects of Monetary Policy (with Nittai Bergman, David Matsa, and Michael Weber), March 2025, Mimeo, Frankfurt School. Journal of Monetary Economics (revise & resubmit).

Selected publications

A Temporary VAT Cut as Unconventional Fiscal Policy (with Rüdiger Bachmann, Olga Goldfayn-Frank, Georgi Kocharkov, Ralph Luetticke, and Michael Weber), Review of Economic Studies, accepted. Supplementary material: link.
Shocks, Frictions, and Inequality in US Business Cycles (with Christian Bayer and Ralph Luetticke), American Economic Review, 114(5), pp. 1211-1247 (lead article), May 2024. DOI: link.
Mr. Keynes Meets the Classics: Government Spending and the Real Exchange Rate (with Francesco D'Ascanio, Gernot Müller, and Johannes Pfeifer), Journal of Political Economy, 132(5), pp. 1642-1683, May 2024. DOI: link.
The Coronavirus Stimulus Package: How Large is the Transfer Multiplier? (with Christian Bayer, Ralph Luetticke, and Gernot Müller), Economic Journal, 133(652), pp. 1318-1347, May 2023. DOI: link.
The Liquidity Channel of Fiscal Policy (with Christian Bayer and Ralph Luetticke), Journal of Monetary Economics, 134, pp. 86-117, March 2023. DOI: link.
Uncertainty-Driven Business Cycles: Assessing the Markup Channel (with Johannes Pfeifer), Quantitative Economics, 12(2), pp. 587-623, May 2021. DOI: link.
Does Austerity Pay Off? (with Gernot Müller and Johannes Pfeifer), Review of Economics and Statistics, 102(2), pp. 323-338, May 2020. DOI: link.
The Costs of Economic Nationalism: Evidence from the Brexit Experiment (with Gernot Müller, Moritz Schularick, and Petr Sedlacek), Economic Journal, 129(623), pp. 2722-2744, October 2019. DOI: link.
Time-Varying Business Volatility and the Price Setting of Firms (with Rüdiger Bachmann, Steffen Elstner, and Christian Grimme), Journal of Monetary Economics, 101, pp. 82-99, January 2019. DOI: link.
Risk Matters: The Real Effects of Volatility Shocks: Comment (with Johannes Pfeifer), American Economic Review, 104(12), pp. 4231-4239, December 2014. DOI: link.
Policy Risk and the Business Cycle (with Johannes Pfeifer), Journal of Monetary Economics, 68, pp. 68-85, November 2014. DOI: link.
Central Bank Communication on Financial Stability (with Michael Ehrmann and Marcel Fratzscher), Economic Journal, 124(577), pp. 701-734, June 2014. DOI: link.

Other writing

On FIRE, news, and expectations (with Zeno Enders and Gernot Müller), in: Ingo Köhler, Laetitia Lenel, Alexander Nützenadel, and Jochen Streb (eds.), Handbook of Economic Expectations in Historical Perspective, Routledge, 2025. DOI: link.
Unconventional Fiscal Policy at Work (with Rüdiger Bachmann, Olga Goldfayn-Frank, Georgi Kocharkov, Ralph Luetticke, and Michael Weber), AEA Papers & Proceedings, 113, pp. 61-64, May 2023. DOI: link.
Firm expectations about their output and prices: Facts, determinants, and effects (with Zeno Enders, Knut Niemann, and Gernot Müller), in: Rüdiger Bachmann, Giorgio Topa, and Wilbert van der Klaauw (eds.), Handbook of Economic Expectations, Elsevier, 2023. DOI: link.