 Is something really wrong with macroeconomics?LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library Abstract: Many critiques of the state of macroeconomics are off target. Current macroeconomic research is not mindless DSGE modelling filled with ridiculous assumptions and oblivious of data. Rather, young macroeconomists are doing vibrant, varied, and exciting work, getting jobs, and being published. Macroeconomics informs economic policy only moderately, and not more than nor differently from other fields in economics. Monetary policy has benefitted significantly from this advice in keeping inflation under control and preventing a new Great Depression. Macroeconomic forecasts perform poorly in absolute terms and, given the size of the challenge, probably always will. But relative to the level of aggregation, the time horizon, and the amount of funding, macroeconomic forecasts are not so obviously worse than those in other fields. What is most wrong with macroeconomics today is perhaps that there is too little discussion of which models to teach and too little investment in graduate-level textbooks. Keywords: methodology; graduate teaching; forecasting; public debate (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 5, January, 2018, 34(1-2), pp. 132-155. ISSN: 0266-903X Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:85671 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.