Macroeconomics After the Great Recession

Abstract

The 17th Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference on Macroeconomics, held at the IMF in Washington on November 3–4, 2016, was organized around the theme of “Macroeconomics after the Great Recession” and celebrated Olivier Blanchard’s contributions to macroeconomics and the Fund. The frst set of conference papers appeared in the previous issue. Below we summarize the key contributions of the papers that appear in the current issue, the second and last of the issues based on this conference. The 2016 Mundell-Fleming lecture was delivered by Larry Summers, Olivier’s long-time friend, colleague and co-author. In his remarks, Larry revisits the problem of secular stagnation – protracted low aggregate demand in the face of low-interest rates. Larry frst articulated the concept of secular stagnation in the fall of 2013 on the same stage as a policy panelist at our 14th Annual Research Conference. Larry argues that the case for secular stagnation has only strengthened over time as the events since 2013 have tended to confrm its predictions and reject those of its critics. Acknowledging that this theory is far from providing a complete explanation of what has happened in the industrial world in recent years, he argues nonetheless that it ofers important insights and requires a rethinking of macroeconomic policy. Larry concludes by outlining the theory’s implications for monetary and fiscal policies