The incompleteness of financial markets and the existence of finance constraints provide an explanation for the sort of coordination problem that afflicts real-world economies, but is absent from simplistic New Classical models. Providing an understanding of monetary and macroeconomic issues in terms of "imperfections," leading economic theorists--including Hicks, Greenwald, Stiglitz, and Aoki--here examine an important new area of macroeconomic theory--the implications of the finance-constraint approach to monetary theory.
Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.
This collection of papers on financial instability and its impact on macroeconomic performance honours Hyman P. Minsky and his lifelong work. It is based on a conference at Washington University, St. Louis, in 1990 and includes among the authors Benjamin M. Friedman, Charles P. Kindleberger, Jan Kregel and Steven Fazzari. These papers consider Minsky's definitive analysis that yields such a clear and disturbing sequence of financial events: booms, government intervention to prevent debt contraction and new booms that cause a progressive buildup of new debt, eventually leaving the economy much more fragile financially.
The second in a series of six volumes containing a selection of Joseph Stiglitz's most important and widely cited work. Volume I set out the basic concepts underlying the economics of information. Volume II extends these concepts and applies them to a number of different settings in labour, capital, and product markets
This collection of survey articles sheds light on crucial questions in the field of monetary, financial and macroeconomic policy. Applies rigorous economic theory and empirical analysis to important practical policy issues. Considers the role of the financial sector in economic development. Looks at why financial crises occur and how they can be avoided. Discusses the relationship between macroeconomic adjustment and poverty. Asks if low-inflation rate regimes are at risk from the ‘zero bound’ to nominal interest rates. Provides accessible overviews of recent research into these questions.
Since the middle of twentieth century, economists have invested great resources into using statistical evidence to relate macroeconomic theories to the real world, and many new econometric techniques have been employed. In these two volumes, a distinguished group of economic theorists, econometricians, and economic methodologists examine how evidence has been used and how it should be used to understand the real world. Volume 1 focuses on the contribution of econometric techniques to understanding the macroeconomic world. It covers the use of evidence to understand the business cycle, the operation of monetary policy, and economic growth. A further section offers assessments of the overall impact of recent econometric techniques such as cointegration and unit roots. Volume 2 focuses on the labour market and economic policy, with sections covering the IS-LM model, the labour market, new Keynesian macroeconomics, and the use of macroeconomics in official documents (in both the USA and EU). These volumes will be valuable to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and practitioners for their clear presentation of opposing perspectives on macroeconomics and how evidence should be used. The chapters are complemented by discussion sections revealing the perspectives of other contributors on the methodological issues raised.
This year, the NBER Macroeconomics Annual celebrates its thirtieth volume. The first two papers examine China’s macroeconomic development. “Trends and Cycles in China's Macroeconomy” by Chun Chang, Kaiji Chen, Daniel F. Waggoner, and Tao Zha outlines the key characteristics of growth and business cycles in China. “Demystifying the Chinese Housing Boom” by Hanming Fang, Quanlin Gu, Wei Xiong, and Li-An Zhou constructs a new house price index, showing that Chinese house prices have grown by ten percent per year over the past decade. The third paper, “External and Public Debt Crises” by Cristina Arellano, Andrew Atkeson, and Mark Wright, asks why there appear to be large differences across countries and subnational jurisdictions in the effect of rising public debts on economic outcomes. The fourth, “Networks and the Macroeconomy: An Empirical Exploration” by Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, and William Kerr, explains how the network structure of the US economy propagates the effect of gross output productivity shocks across upstream and downstream sectors. The fifth and sixth papers investigate the usefulness of surveys of household’s beliefs for understanding economic phenomena. “Expectations and Investment,” by Nicola Gennaioli, Yueran Ma, and Andrei Shleifer, demonstrates that a chief financial officer's expectations of a firm's future earnings growth is related to both the planned and actual future investment of that firm. “Declining Desire to Work and Downward Trends in Unemployment and Participation” by Regis Barnichon and Andrew Figura shows that an increasing number of prime-age Americans who are not in the labor force report no desire to work and that this decline accelerated during the second half of the 1990s.
A Macroeconomics Reader brings together a collection of key readings in modern macroeconomics. Each article has been carefully chosen to provide the reader with accessible, non-technical, and reflective papers which critically assess important areas and current controversies within modern macroeconomics.The book is divided into six parts, each with
In the conventional discourse on macroeconomics, the subject of human development is at best marginal and at worst irrelevant. In the unconventional discourse on human development, macroeconomics or its constraints are seldom recognised, even if its consequences are often highlighted. There are, however, intersections and interconnections, which provide the rationale for this book that seeks to map some broad contours of an unexplored, yet important, domain. Macroeconomics is important for human development because it determines levels of employment, the degree of social protection and the public provision of services such as healthcare or education. Human development has implications and consequences for macroeconomics, for it can mobilize or claim resources to enlarge or diminish space for macroeconomic policies. The relationship exists, and matters, not only in poor countries but also in wealthy ones. Employment, even if neglected, provides the critical link. This book shows that causation runs in both directions and can be either positive or negative. It reveals similarities and differences between developing countries and industrialised countries. The political context is significant everywhere as interests, ideology and institutions influence economic policies in both spheres to shape outcomes. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities.
