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2025 MacroFinance Online Summer School

2025 Macrofinance Online Summer School

June 3 to July 7, 2025

Abstract:
This online summer school brings students to the frontier of modern continuous time modeling techniques at the intersection between macroeconomics, monetary economics, and (international) finance. The aim of this course is to develop and teach advanced tools and includes a step-by-step solution procedure that students can apply to a variety of economic problems.

Organized by Sebastian Merkel, Andrey Alexandrov, Goutham Gopalakrishna, Weiqi Chen, Zhouzhou Gu, and Markus Brunnermeier

Target Audience:

The course is designed for Ph.D students in economics, finance, and related fields. The course is suitable for first year PhD students.

Please register here. Top performers are awarded with acceptance to the Princeton Initiative in September.
You can still register even though the review sessions have already started. Registered students will receive each Friday a reminder about the problem set and the link to the upcoming review sessions held on Mondays and Tuesdays. 

Background Readings:

Flipped classroom setting:

  • Students watch online lectures at their preferred time.
  • Review sessions are held simultaneously for all participants. We will offer several review sessions for different time zones.
  • Participating students are expected to solve and submit problem sets. They are also allowed to do it in small groups. Students are expected to present their solutions.
  • Problem sets are due each Sunday night at 23:59 (EDT). Please upload your solution after labeling your PDF file with according to the following file naming convention:
    2025_(ProblemSet#)_(YourLastNameFirstName)_(FileType).

Awards:

  • Students who perform well on problem sets and visibly contribute to the review sessions are eligible to attend the Princeton Initiative 2025 in Princeton from September 5-7.
  • Receive a certificate of participation from Markus[1]

Outline, Timing and Links:

  • Opening Zoom Meeting – Tuesday, June 3, 2025 (1:00 pm Eastern Standard Time; 19:00 European Time).
    Zoom link will be sent to all registered participants.
  • Recorded on YouTube

Core Lectures

01. Introduction to Macrofinance
      (week June 3 – 8)

02. Continuous Time Stochastic Optimization (Consumption, Portfolio)
       (week June 3 – 8)

03. Simple Real Macrofinance Models with Heterogeneous Agents (Basak-Cuoco, Kiyotaki-Moore)
       (week June 9 – 15)

04. Endogenous Risk Dynamics with Log Utility
       (week June 16 – 22)

10. Monetary Models with One Sector
       (June 23 – 29)

11. Safe Asset with Time-varying Risk
      (week June 30 – July 6)

Numerical Lectures: Function Iterations
     (week June 30 – July 6)

Yuliy Sannikov’s mini-video series

Andrey Alexandrov’s lecture

Advanced Lectures: Real Macrofinance Models

05. Contrasting Financial Frictions and Net Worth Trap

07. Endogenous Risk Dynamics with CRRA and Epstein-Zin utility, ValueFcn Backwards Iteration

08. Endogenous Risk Dynamics with Jumps

Advanced Lectures: Monetary Models

12. I Theory of Money

13. Sticky Prices: New Keynesian Models

14. Welfare and Optimal Policy

  • 15slides
  • 15video 

Advanced Lectures: International Macro

20. Exorbitant Privileges: 2 Countries Safe Asset Model

[1] This is not an official degree from Princeton University