US needs large-scale Covid testing urgently: Nobel winning economist Paul Romer
In an exclusive interview with EconReporter on Tuesday, Romer, co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics Science, urged the US to adopt large-scale testing immediately to halt this most detrimental economic slump ever since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
A Macroeconomic Earthquake | Q&A with Larry Christiano
In this interview, Prof Christiano shared his view on the development of post-2008 academic macroeconomics. We’ve asked Prof Christiano does he agree that modern macroeconomic models are too complicated for the general public, or even policymakers and if he agrees that economic models should be “simpler”. Does he think the recent revival of ISLM model a “good trend”? Should Macroeconomists hang on their faith in DSGE models? Should they explore alternative paths?
Fiscal Theory of Price Level and State of Macroeconomics | Q&A with John Cochrane...
John Cochrane talks about Fiscal Theory of Price Level and how can we apply this theory on the current macroeconomy.
The sovereign-bank “doom loop”
Since the Euro crisis, investors and policymakers are well aware of the so-called "doom loop" between the banking system and the sovereign. That is, a crisis originating in the banking system (sovereign) will weaken the sovereign (banking system), which in turn will worsen the banking (sovereign) crisis itself.
In a recent ECB discussion Paper "Managing the sovereign-bank nexus", the 7 economists - Giovanni Dell’Ariccia, Caio Ferreira, Nigel Jenkinson, Luc Laeven, Alberto Martin, Camelia Minoiu, and Alexander Popov - coauthored the paper suggested that the banks and sovereigns are linked by three interacting channels:
Major Shifts in Macroeconomics Since the Great Recession | Interview with Atif Mian
Atif Mian, co-author of House of Debt, discusses what he thinks are the "revolutionary" changes in macroeconomic academia since the Great Recession.
Why hadn’t Federal Reserve rescued Lehman Brothers in 2008?
This week, the trio who was directly responsible for the decision to let Lehman fail – Bernanke, Tim Geithner (then New York Fed President), and Hank Paulson (then Treasury Secretary) – joined together at a panel held by Brookings Institution and spoke about the lessons they had learned from the crisis.
Phillips Curve is Not a Straight Line…
A story about three economists agree with the prevailing consensus that the Phillips Curve of the US is flattened in the last few decades on the one hand; and dispute the idea that the Phillips Curve is dead on the other.
“The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870-2015”
How Alan Taylor, one of the authors of "The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870-2015" explains the liquidity premium problem when we compare the rate of return on Housing and Equity
How the Game of Bank Bargains Created the Financial Crisis? | Q&A with Calomiris...
Welcome to the latest installment of our interview series “Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?”
“Where is the General Theory of the...
What is Neo-Fisherian and FTPL? | Q&A with John Cochrane |
Cochrane discusses with us his view on the development in Macroeconomics since the Great Depression. He also explains what Neo-Fisherian and Fiscal Theory of Price Level are, and why they are important for understanding the current economic situation around the world.
How to Maintain Prosperity for All | Interview with Roger Farmer
Roger Farmer explains : Why central banks should consider stock market intervention in stabilizing the employment markets?
How to use Interest on Reserve for Inflation Targeting? | Q&A with Ricardo Reis...
This is the eighth installment of our interview series “Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?”
In this installment, we continue our talk...
Why the Fed should Keep a Sizeable Balance Sheet? | Q&A with Jeremy...
Jeremy Stein, former Federal Reserve governor, talks to us about his recent research “The Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet as a Financial-Stability Tool” and why the Fed should maintain a sizeable balance sheet.
Hysteresis – An Underrated Macroeconomics Question
Hysteresis is referred to the hypothesis that recessions may have permanent effects on the level of output relative to trend.
Standing Repo Facility — the Fed’s soon-to-be most important tool?
Standing Repo Facility (SRF) is a relatively young Federal Reserve facility. Formally established as a permanent tool in July 2021, SRF allows banks to obtain overnight liquidity with high-quality collaterals like Treasuries through a repurchase agreement. Most people may not be familiar with this "obscure" Fed tool, but it is possible that SRF will soon become one of the Fed's most important tools.
Integrating Psychology with Economics | Q&A with Hersh Shefrin & Shlomo Benartzi
In celebration of Richard Thaler's prize lecture for his 2017 Nobel prize, we interviewed two of his best co-authors -- Hersh Shefrin and Shlomo Benartzi -- to discuss the future of behavioral economics.
Performance of Macroeconomics is not that bad! | Q&A with Ricardo Reis |
In the interview, Ricardo Reis discuss with us his latest research project - "Reservism", the study of the role of reserves on central bank balance sheets and their implications for central bank solvency, quantitative easing, and the ability to control inflation.
Market Monetarism and Macroeconomics | Q&A with Scott Sumner |
This is the second installment of our interview series "Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?".
In this second installment, we continue...
How to Reform the Federal Reserve System? | Q&A with Kocherlakota |
Welcome to the latest installment of our interview series “Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?”
“Where is the General Theory of the...
What comes after housing market bubble?
An investigation into the probability of a crash in house prices following a housing bubble
Nonbank Lending
In their recent working paper "Nonbank Lending", economists Sergey Chernenko, Isil Erel, and Robert Prilmeier provided an insightful overview of the sources and terms of private debt financing during the post-crisis period.
How Household Debt affect the Global Business Cycles | Q&A with Atif Mian |
In this installment of the interview, Professor Mian explains the major findings in his recent research paper "Household Debt and Business Cycles World Wide" and the important implications of that paper.
Midas Paradox and the Great Depression | Q&A with Scott Sumner |
Welcome! This is the first installment of our interview series "Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?"
"Where is the General Theory of...
The effects of Unconventional Exchange Rate and Monetary Policy | Q&A with Joseph Gagnon
The honorable guest for this installment is Joseph E. Gagnon, senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). We discussed one of his latest research paper "Unconventional Monetary and Exchange Rate Policies" and the new book he coauthored with C. Fred Bergsten, "Currency Conflict and Trade Policy: A New Strategy for the United States". Gagnon also shared his view on the very popular "Global Financial Cycle" ideas.
Akerlof on Keynesian-neoclassical synthesis’s departure from Keynes
George Akerlof explains how the Keynesian- neoclassical synthesis dominated the field, and what problems this dominance resulted.
The Disappointments with Post-Great Recession Macroeconomics | Q&A with Kocherlakota |
Welcome to the latest installment of our interview series “Where is the General Theory of the 21st Century?”
“Where is the General Theory of the...
The Missing Profits of Nations and Multinationals’ Extreme Profitability in Tax Havens
The economics of tax evasion is a growing field in academic economics. There are much new exciting research trying to understand the mechanism behind global tax evasion. "The Missing Profits of Nations” by Thomas R. Tørsløv, Ludvig S. Wier and Gabriel Zucman is one of the most noteworthy research on the dynamic behind global tax evasions.
QE: A User’s Guide
In a recent policy research, Joseph Gagnon of Peterson Institute for International Economics and Brian Sack of D.E. Shaw Group asked an important question: when the Federal Reserve implement QE in the next crisis, should they use it somewhat differently?
Blanchard’s “Policy Model” v “Theory Model”
Back in November last year, Professor Olivier Blanchard discussed with me about his view that there should be four types of macroeconomics, and "theory...
Aging, Output Per Capita and Secular Stagnation
Gauti B. Eggertsson, Manuel Lancastre, and Lawrence H. Summers explain in their paper "Aging, Output Per Capita and Secular Stagnation" the role of aging in the Secular Stagnation model.
Is there a Zero Lower Bound?
In a recent research, four European Central Bank economists found that negative interest rate policy in the eurozone can encourage banks to increase lending and encourage cooperations to increase investments.
That is, contrary to what macroeconomics models usually predict, interest rate policy can still has stimulative effect even the zero lower bound is reached.
Interview with Paul Romer on large scale Covid testing – Transcript
Edited transcript of our interview with Paul Romer, on why the US urgently to scale up testing for Covid-19 and why he thinks the covid-crisis amounts an intellectual failure
BIS’s latest hunt for Zombie (firms)
In the latest BIS Quarterly Review, researchers Ryan Banerjee and Boris Hofmann consolidated some of the earlier research to illustrate the problem of zombie firms. They argued that the rise of zombies predated the 2008 financial crisis, and has since been dragging down the productivity of the real economy.
IMF Growth Projections and Overfitting in Judgment-based Economic Forecasts
In a recent IMF working paper "Overfitting in Judgment-based Economic Forecasts: The Case of IMF Growth Projections", economist Klaus-Peter Hellwig examined IMF's World Economic Forecasts (WEO) and check if the forecast model suffer from the problem of overfitting.
The Non‐Bank Credit Cycle
In a new working paper "The Non‐Bank Credit Cycle", researchers Esti Kemp, René van Stralen, Alexandros Vardoulakis, and Peter Wierts tried to look into the cyclical properties of non‐bank credit and its relevance for financial stability.
Why Does Credit Growth Crowd Out Real Economic Growth?
The faster the credit growth, the worse it is for real growth (output per worker). This is what Stephen G. Cecchetti and Enisse Kharroubi want to explain in their NBER working paper "Why Does Credit Growth Crowd Out Real Economic Growth?"
Politics and the Economics of Banking Crises | Q&A with Charles Calomiris |
In this installment, we continue our discussion with Prof. Charles Calomiris, Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at Columbia Business School. The topic of this installment is the missing role of politics in economics models of banking crises. We also discussed if Calomiris thinks macroeconomics has a similar problem.
Bernanke on Trump’s Fiscal Policy
Ben Bernanke has a new blog post on Brookings. The focus of the post is to explain "the large difference between the reactions of the Fed and the markets to the change in fiscal prospects since the election"
Why Yellen should have stayed as Fed Governor? | Interview with Conti-Brown
Peter Conti-Brown, author of one of the best book about the institution of Fed, "The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve", explains what Jay Powell's nomination means to the Fed independence and why Janet Yellen should have stay as governor after his Chair term ended.
Media Sentiment and International Asset Prices
A new working paper from the IMF which tries to assess the impact of media sentiment on equity markets.
FedSpeak Might Not Have Much Effects on Public’s Inflation Expectation
In a recent NBER working paper "Monetary Policy Communications and their Effects on Household Inflation Expectations", economists Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Michael Weber tried to find out how the household's expectation for inflation change with regard to the information they received.
Where are the endpoints of QT? Ample Reserve System vs Demand-driven Floor System
Quantitative tightening (QT)—a process central banks use to reverse years of liquidity creation from quantitative easing (QE)—is concluding in many advanced economies. The central banks are growing confident that reserve levels in their financial systems are nearing their endpoints.
Where are the endpoints of QT and what come next?
Bank Equity and Banking Crises
In a recent study "Bank Equity and Banking Crises" by Matthew Baron (of Cornell University), Emil Verner (MIT Sloan), and Wei Xiong (Princeton University), the three economists developed a comprehensive database of bank equity prices and banking crises with a full-sample of 46 countries from 1870-2016. They try to understand the dynamic between bank equity decline and banking crises.
The problem with monetarist’s view of inflation
Long-run stability of the velocity, or the filpside of it, money demand, however, is not a empirically founded assumption.
Central Bank’s Balance Sheet and the Rise of Reserves
The above figure shows the balance sheet of four major central banks from 2005 to 2015. Above the horizontal axis is the asset side...
What Macroeconomists agree with each others, according to Blanchard
Olivier Blanchard a list of things that macroeconomists normally agreed on and need no further discussions.
Measuring Federal Reserve officials’ secret disagreement behind locked doors of FOMC meetings
Dissent votes in Federal Reserve policy meetings are rare, accounting for only 6.37% of the votes between 1976 and 2017. However, opting not to vote against the FOMC consensus doesn't necessarily mean committee members don't "disagree" with it.
The model you should use to explain Macroeconomics to your Mum | Q&A with...
>Professor Olivier Blanchard further explained the role empirical research on DSGE models, how to teach undergraduates macro after the Great Recession, and his research on hysteresis.
CoCo issuance and bank fragility
A series of papers by Stefan Avdjiev, Bilyana Bogdanova, Patrick Bolton, Wei Jiang, and Anastasia Kartasheva on this topic is highly recommended.
Macroprudential Policy – how does it differ from rate hikes?
Macroprudential policies, it is argued, are more targeted and can complement central bank’s use of interest rate policy.
