Blog Post
What’s at stake: In a low r-star environment, fiscal policy should be accommodative at the global level. Instead, even in countries with current account surplus and fiscal space the IMF appears to have trouble advocating fiscal expansion. This also raises a political economy puzzle regarding the persistence of the current policy mix of tight fiscal and easy money.
Blog Post
What’s at stake: As we approach Jackson Hole, monetary policymakers are considering how to redesign monetary policy strategies to better cope with a low r-star environment.
Blog Post
What’s at stake: In 2008, Olivier Blanchard argued in a paper called “the state of macro” that a largely shared vision of fluctuations and of methodology had emerged. With the financial crisis and our inability to prevent the greatest recession since the 1930s, the discipline entered into a period of soul searching. The discussions on the state of macro received new echoes this week after Blanchard published a short essay on the future of DSGE models.
Blog Post
What’s at stake: This week was dominated by a new study by Roland Fryer exploring racial differences in police use of force. His counterintuitive result that blacks and Hispanics experience discrimination for all types of interaction involving force except for officer involved shootings provoked debate after the study was published on Monday.
Blog Post
What’s at stake: For many commentators, Brexit was the signal of a broad populist backlash and illustrated the need to articulate policies that address the grievances of those citizens who have been left behind by recent economic changes.
Blog Post
The OECD has been pushing the idea that the productivity slowdown is not so much due to a lack of innovation but rather due to a lack of innovation diffusion between firms.
Blog Post
What’s at stake: In line with the crisis-induced reform hypothesis, European countries have since 2010 enacted unpopular reforms in labour market regulation and social welfare systems.
Blog Post
What’s at stake: Since 2008 the IMF has been at the forefront of a revaluation of the orthodox policy toolbox. While the majority of policies that constituted the old Washington Consensus remain in place, the consensus has moved on financial openness and fiscal consolidations.
Blog Post
What’s at stake: The reluctance to use fiscal policy as a stabilizing tool in the current deflationary environment has been puzzling to many and a number of authors are now putting forward possible explanations.
Blog Post
What’s at stake: A heated debate took place this week on the blogosphere on the link between regulation and growth following an op-ed by John Cochrane claiming the US economy could be five times richer if regulations were scrapped.
Blog Post
What’s at stake: The prevailing narrative for the rise of anti-establishment politicians is that advocates of integration vastly underestimated the plight of globalization’s losers.
Blog Post
What’s at stake: The Senate announced this week revisions to a sentencing reform bill – the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act – that would lower mandatory minimums for some low-level drug crimes.