Our answer: Not so well. We reached that conclusion after reviewing recent research on the role of technology as a source of economic fluctuations. The bulk of the evidence suggests a limited role for aggregate technology shocks, pointing instead to demand factors as the main force behind the strong positive comovement between output and labor input measures.
IST shocks are often interpreted as multi-factor productivity (MFP) shocks in a separate investment-producing sector. However, this interpretation is strictly valid only when some stringent conditions are satisfied. Some of these conditions are at odds with the data. Using a two-sector model whose calibration is based on the U.S. Input-Output Tables, the authors consider the implications of relaxing several of these conditions. They show how the effects of IST shocks in a one-sector model differ from those of MFP shocks to an investment-producing sector of a two-sector model. MFP shocks induce a positive short-run correlation between consumption and investment consistent with U.S. data, while IST shocks do not. Illus. This is a print on demand report.
Economic Policy and the Great Stagflation discusses the national economic policy and economics as a policy-oriented science. This book summarizes what economists do and do not know about the inflation and recession that affected the U.S. economy during the years of the Great Stagflation in the mid-1970s. The topics discussed include the basic concepts of stagflation, turbulent economic history of 1971-1976, anatomy of the great recession and inflation, and legacy of the Great Stagflation. The relation of wage-price controls, fiscal policy, and monetary policy to the Great Stagflation is also elaborated. This publication is beneficial to economists and students researching on the history of the Great Stagflation and policy errors of the 1970s.
At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, by requiring 100% reserve backing for deposits. Irving Fisher (1936) claimed the following advantages for this plan: (1) Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money. (2) Complete elimination of bank runs. (3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt. (4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. We study these claims by embedding a comprehensive and carefully calibrated model of the banking system in a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. We find support for all four of Fisher's claims. Furthermore, output gains approach 10 percent, and steady state inflation can drop to zero without posing problems for the conduct of monetary policy.
We study the effects and historical contribution of monetary policy shocks to consumption and income inequality in the United States since 1980. Contractionary monetary policy actions systematically increase inequality in labor earnings, total income, consumption and total expenditures. Furthermore, monetary shocks can account for a significant component of the historical cyclical variation in income and consumption inequality. Using detailed micro-level data on income and consumption, we document the different channels via which monetary policy shocks affect inequality, as well as how these channels depend on the nature of the change in monetary policy.
Productivity has again moved to center stage in two critical academic and policy debates: the slowing of global growth amid spectacular technological advances, and developing countries’ frustratingly slow progress in catching up to the technological frontier. Productivity Revisited brings together the new conceptual advances of 'second-wave' productivity analysis that have revolutionized the study of productivity, calling much previous analysis into question while providing a new set of tools for approaching these debates. The book extends this analysis and, using unique data sets from multiple developing countries, grounds it in the developing-country context. It calls for rebalancing away from an exclusive focus on misallocation toward a greater focus on upgrading firms and facilitating the emergence of productive new establishments. Such an approach requires a supportive environment and various types of human capital--managerial, technical, and actuarial--necessary to cultivate new transformational firms. The book is the second volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers.
A cutting-edge graduate-level textbook on the macroeconomics of international trade Combining theoretical models and data in ways unimaginable just a few years ago, open economy macroeconomics has experienced enormous growth over the past several decades. This rigorous and self-contained textbook brings graduate students, scholars, and policymakers to the research frontier and provides the tools and context necessary for new research and policy proposals. Martín Uribe and Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé factor in the discipline's latest developments, including major theoretical advances in incorporating financial and nominal frictions into microfounded dynamic models of the open economy, the availability of macro- and microdata for emerging and developed countries, and a revolution in the tools available to simulate and estimate dynamic stochastic models. The authors begin with a canonical general equilibrium model of an open economy and then build levels of complexity through the coverage of important topics such as international business-cycle analysis, financial frictions as drivers and transmitters of business cycles and global crises, sovereign default, pecuniary externalities, involuntary unemployment, optimal macroprudential policy, and the role of nominal rigidities in shaping optimal exchange-rate policy. Based on courses taught at several universities, Open Economy Macroeconomics is an essential resource for students, researchers, and practitioners. Detailed exploration of international business-cycle analysis Coverage of financial frictions as drivers and transmitters of business cycles and global crises Extensive investigation of nominal rigidities and their role in shaping optimal exchange-rate policy Other topics include fixed exchange-rate regimes, involuntary unemployment, optimal macroprudential policy, and sovereign default and debt sustainability Chapters include exercises and replication codes
Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.
Handbook of Macroeconomics Volumes 2A and 2B surveys major advances in macroeconomic scholarship since the publication of Volume 1 (1999), carefully distinguishing between empirical, theoretical, methodological, and policy issues, including fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policies to deal with crises, unemployment, and economic growth. As this volume shows, macroeconomics has undergone a profound change since the publication of the last volume, due in no small part to the questions thrust into the spotlight by the worldwide financial crisis of 2008. With contributions from the world's leading macroeconomists, its reevaluation of macroeconomic scholarship and assessment of its future constitute an investment worth making. - Serves a double role as a textbook for macroeconomics courses and as a gateway for students to the latest research - Acts as a one-of-a-kind resource as no major collections of macroeconomic essays have been published in the last decade - Builds upon Volume 1 by using its section headings to illustrate just how far macroeconomic thought has evolved
