NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2013: Volume 28 ((NBER) National Bureau of Economic Research Macroeconomics Annual) - Tapa dura

The first two papers in this issue tackle fiscal and monetary policy, asking how interest rates and inflation can remain low despite fiscal policy behavior that appears inconsistent with a monetary policy regime focused only on inflation and output and not on fiscal balances. The third examines the implications of reference-dependent preferences and moral hazard in employment fluctuations in the labor market. The fourth paper analyzes the long-run inflation rate, the coexistence of money with pledgeable and money-like assets, and why inflation did not increase in response to business-cycle fluctuations in productivity. And the fifth looks at the stock market and how it relates to the real economy. The final chapter discusses the large and public shift towards more expansionary monetary policy that has recently occurred in Japan.

Jonathan Parker is the Donald C. Clark/HSBC Professor of Consumer Finance at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management and a research associate of the NBER. Michael Woodford is the John Bates Clark Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University and a research associate of the NBER.