In this narrative history, David E. Lindsey gives the reader a ringside seat to a century of policies at the US Federal Reserve. Alternating between broad historical strokes and deep dives into the significance of monetary issues and developments, Lindsey offers a fascinating look into monetary policymaking from the Fed's inception in 1913 to today. Lindsey's three decades of service on the Federal Reserve Board staff allow him to combine the heft of scholarship with an insider's perspective on how the recent chairmen's and current chairwoman's personalities and singular visions have shaped policy choices with far-reaching consequences. He critiques the performances of Chairman Ben Bernanke and Vice Chair Janet Yellen during the prelude, outbreak, and aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, situating them in the context of the Fed's century-long history. He also quantitatively explores an alternative to the conventional New-Keynesian theory of inflation, replacing so-called "rational expectations" with the Fed's inflation objective. This unique volume is a piece of living history that has much to offer economists and monetary policy and finance professionals.

Authoritative takes on the most current and pressing issues in macroeconomics today. The NBER Macroeconomics Annual provides a forum for leading economists to participate in important debates in macroeconomics and to report on major developments in macroeconomic analysis and policy. The NBER Macroeconomics Annual brings together leading scholars to discuss five research papers on central issues in contemporary macroeconomics. First, Andrea Eisfeldt, Antonio Falato, and Mindy Xiaolan document the rise of a new class of worker that receives part of its labor income as equity-based compensation, its role in the recent decline in the labor share of income, and implications for the returns to skilled labor and the implied capital-skill complementarity. Next, Michael Bauer and Eric Swanson focus on monetary policy shocks and argue the correlation between estimated monetary surprises and previously available information can be explained by uncertainty about the parameters of the monetary policy rule. Using new data and methods they find effects of monetary policy on macroeconomic variables that are much larger than previously estimated. Job Boerma and Loukas Karabarbounis provide a framework for quantitatively exploring the gap in wealth between White and Black Americans over the past 150 years and examine the effectiveness of reparations as a tool for closing this gap. Guido Menzio considers workers who do not have rational expectations, and whose “stubborn” beliefs change the response of wages to technology shocks, resulting in sticky wages. He finds that the larger the fraction of workers with stubborn beliefs, the more volatile unemployment is. Finally, Rishabh Aggarwal, Adrien Auclert, Matthew Rognlie, and Ludwig Straub investigate the growth—particularly in the United States—of private savings, current account deficits, and fiscal deficits after 2020. They argue that fiscal deficits lead to large and persistent increases in private savings and current account deficits.

All Fall Down traces the ways in which changes in financial structure and regulation eroded monetary control and led to historically high levels of debt relative to GDP in both developed and emerging economies. Rising stocks of debt drove the global financial system into crisis in 2008 when households, businesses, financial institutions and the public sector in some countries strained to generate sufficient income for debt service. The stagnation and fall in asset prices that followed began the process of unwinding that led to a run on the financial sector by the financial sector.

Leading economists discuss post–financial crisis policy dilemmas, including the dangers of complacency in a period of relative stability. The Great Depression led to the Keynesian revolution and dramatic shifts in macroeconomic theory and macroeconomic policy. Similarly, the stagflation of the 1970s led to the adoption of the natural rate hypothesis and to a major reassessment of the role of macroeconomic policy. Should the financial crisis and the Great Recession lead to yet another major reassessment, to another intellectual revolution? Will it? If so, what form should it, or will it, take? These are the questions taken up in this book, in a series of contributions by policymakers and academics. The contributors discuss the complex role of the financial sector, the relative roles of monetary and fiscal policy, the limits of monetary policy to address financial stability, the need for fiscal policy to play a more active role in stabilization, and the relative roles of financial regulation and macroprudential tools. The general message is a warning against going back to precrisis ways—to narrow inflation targeting, little use of fiscal policy for stabilization, and insufficient financial regulation. Contributors David Aikman, Alan J. Auerbach, Ben S. Bernanke, Olivier Blanchard, Lael Brainard, Markus K. Brunnermeier, Marco Buti, Benoît Cœuré, Mario Draghi, Barry Eichengreen, Jason Furman, Gita Gopinath, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, Andrew G. Haldane, Philipp Hildebrand, Marc Hinterschweiger, Sujit Kapadia, Nellie Liang, Adam S. Posen, Raghuram Rajan, Valerie Ramey, Carmen Reinhart, Dani Rodrik, Robert E. Rubin, Jay C. Shambaugh, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Jeremy C. Stein, Lawrence H. Summers

New Perspectives in Economics: A United States Focus is a new collection of topical articles that examine the changing economic landscape in the United States of America. This book provides researchers, professionals, managers and policy makers with an easy-to-read selection of interesting research articles.

Completely revised and updated to include the ongoing financial crisis and the Obama administration's programs to combat it, this is the best available introductory textbook for an undergraduate course on Financial Markets and Institutions. It provides balanced coverage of theories, policies, and institutions in a conversational style that avoids complex models and mathematics, making it a student-friendly text with many unique teaching features. Financial crises, global competition, deregulation, technological innovation, and growing government oversight have significantly changed financial markets and institutions. The new edition of this text is designed to capture the ongoing changes, and to present an analytical framework that enables students to understand and anticipate changes in the financial system and accompanying changes in markets and institutions. The text includes Learning Objectives and end-of-chapter Key Words and Questions, and an online Instructor's Manual is available to adopters.