Juhani Pääkkönen

Juhani Pääkkönen is a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Dynamic Uncertainty, where his work applies mathematical analysis to the foundations of macroeconomic theory — in particular, the rigorous study of heterogeneous-agent economies and the aggregate dynamics they generate. He holds a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Helsinki (Department of Mathematics and Statistics), where his doctoral research examined stationary equilibria in Bewley–Aiyagari-type models formulated as infinite-dimensional optimal control problems. His thesis established existence and uniqueness conditions for stationary wealth distributions in economies with uninsurable idiosyncratic risk, using fixed-point arguments in spaces of measures and functional-analytic methods suited to the infinite-dimensional state space.

Following his doctorate, Pääkkönen developed numerical methods for computing equilibria in the continuous-time formulations of these models. Working in the framework of coupled Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman and Fokker–Planck equations, he produced convergent finite difference schemes for the stationary system and analysed the convergence properties of time-iteration algorithms for the transient dynamics — work with direct applications to the quantitative analysis of fiscal reform, redistribution, and wealth accumulation in heterogeneous-agent economies.

At IADU, his research addresses macroeconomic policy design from a mathematical foundations perspective: the dynamics of public debt under distributional heterogeneity, the aggregate consequences of tax policy changes in economies with precautionary saving, and the formulation of fiscal sustainability conditions as constraints on the stationary equilibria of dynamic models. His work supports the Institute's capacity to provide quantitatively founded analysis to finance ministries and sovereign debt management offices operating in economies with substantial household-level heterogeneity.