The day macroeconomics changed

It is of course ludicrous, but who cares. The day of the Boston Fed conference in 1978 is fast taking on a symbolic significance. It is the ...

Reform and revolution in macroeconomics

Mainly for economists Paul Romer has a few recent posts (start here , most recent here ) where he tries to examine why the saltwater/freshw...

Where macroeconomics went wrong

In my view, the answer is in the 1970/80s with the New Classical revolution (NCR). However I also think the new ideas that came with that re...

Methodological seduction

Mainly for macroeconomists or those interested in economic methodology. I first summarise my discussion in two earlier posts ( here and her...

Rereading Lucas and Sargent 1979

Mainly for macroeconomists and those interested in macroeconomic thought Following this little interchange ( me , Mark Thoma , Paul Krugma...

Understanding the New Classical revolution

In the account of the history of macroeconomic thought I gave here , the New Classical counter revolution was both methodological and ideolo...

Was the neoclassical synthesis unstable?

This post presents a very simple story of the development of macroeconomic thought from Keynes until today. It is related to a recent post ...

Microfoundations and Macro Wars

There have been two strands of reaction to my last  post . One has been to interpret it as yet another salvo in the macro wars. The second h...