Most macroeconomists have accepted that their tools need to incorporate more real world phenomena, such as financial intermediation and labor market frictions. Fabio Ghironi discusses the need to incorporate more microeconomics to macroeconomics.

The Centre for International Macroeconomic Studies (CIMS) in the School of Economics, University of Surrey will hold a five-day Summer School from 4th-8th September, 2017.

The School will consist of two parallel four-day courses (Foundations of DSGE modelling; Advanced DSGE modelling) and four parallel one-day stand-alone courses on day five (Financial Frictions in DSGE Models; DSGE-VAR Models and Forecasting; Occasionally Binding Constraints and Nonlinear Estimation; Emerging Open Economies). Participants can register for all five days, or for only one of the stand-alone one-day courses.

To apply or for further details visit our website: www.surrey.ac.uk/cimssummercourse

Previous research found that income and wealth inequality had little impact on the aggregate dynamics of consumption, investment and output. This reinforced the idea that we can study downturns in the economy using representative agents. This column argues that household inequality affects both the depth of a recession and the welfare losses of those affected by it. Therefore we should explicitly measure and model household heterogeneity when we consider the impact of business cycle fluctuations and the welfare consequences of economic crises.

The ratio of wealth to income has increased substantially since WWII. Despite the key role of housing wealth in this process, an appropriate macroeconomic model that can explain recent history and assess the future is still lacking. This column presents a novel macroeconomic model designed to investigate the evolution of housing wealth in a growing economy with a fixed overall land supply. A key implication is that rising house and land prices are natural phenomena in a growing economy. Further, rising wealth-to-income ratios appear to be an important trigger for the long-term growth of the finance industry.

The Global Crisis renewed debate on the benefits and limitations of coordinating international macro policies. This column highlights the rare conditions that lead to international cooperation, along with the potential benefits for the global economy. In normal times, deeper macro cooperation among countries is associated with welfare gains of a second-order magnitude, making the odds of cooperation low. When bad tail events induce imminent and correlated threats of destabilised financial markets, the perceived losses have a first-order magnitude. The apprehension of these losses in times of peril may elicit rare and beneficial macro cooperation.

There is generally consensus among macroeconomists that monetary policy works best when it is systematic. Following the financial crisis, the US Federal Reserve shifted from long-term, systematic policy to short-term goals targeting unemployment. This column argues that, while these were appropriate in the aftermath of the downturn, such policy accommodations have been pursued for too long since. The need for a somewhat accommodative policy cannot be used to defend the current non-systematic policy and excessive emphasis on short-term employment gains.

Despite being a mainstay of macroeconomic theory for the past half century, the Phillips curve often receives the death knell from various commentators. These critiques often rely on results from data samples spanning relatively short periods. Using the case of Ireland, this column argues that short-term idiosyncrasies can explain the failure of the model in these contexts. Taking a longer historical view, the Phillips curve remains a useful macroeconomic model, at least in the Irish context.

Before the 2008 crisis, the mainstream worldview among US macroeconomists was that economic fluctuations were regular and essentially self-correcting. In this column, IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard explains how this benign view of fluctuations took hold in the profession, and what lessons have been learned since the crisis. He argues that macroeconomic policy should aim to keep the economy away from ‘dark corners’, where it can malfunction badly.

Since World War II, economic growth has been faster in the US under Democratic presidents than under Republican ones. This column documents that which party controls Congress does not matter for growth, that the Democratic growth advantage is concentrated in the first two years of a presidency, and that presidential party affiliation Granger-causes growth. Neither fiscal nor monetary policy can account for this gap. Instead, the factors that have explanatory promise are: shocks to oil prices, total factor productivity, European growth, and consumer expectations of future economic conditions.