Macroeconomics is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. This includes national, regional, and global economies. Macroeconomists study topics such as output/GDP and national income, unemployment, price indices and inflation, consumption, saving, investment, energy, international trade, and international finance.
Rüdiger Dornbusch was a German economist who worked in the United States for most of his career.
Business cycles are intervals of general expansion followed by recession in economic performance. The changes in economic activity that characterize business cycles have important implications for the welfare of the general population, government institutions, and private sector firms.
Black Wednesday, or the 1992 sterling crisis, was a financial crisis that occurred on 16 September 1992 when the UK Government was forced to withdraw sterling from the (first) European Exchange Rate Mechanism , following a failed attempt to keep its exchange rate above the lower limit required for ERM participation. At that time, the United Kingdom held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
The global financial system is the worldwide framework of legal agreements, institutions, and both formal and informal economic action that together facilitate international flows of financial capital for purposes of investment and trade financing. Since emerging in the late 19th century during the first modern wave of economic globalization, its evolution is marked by the establishment of central banks, multilateral treaties, and intergovernmental organizations aimed at improving the transparency, regulation, and effectiveness of international markets. In the late 1800s, world migration and communication technology facilitated unprecedented growth in international trade and investment. At the onset of World War I, trade contracted as foreign exchange markets became paralyzed by money market illiquidity. Countries sought to defend against external shocks with protectionist policies and trade virtually halted by 1933, worsening the effects of the global Great Depression until a series of reciprocal trade agreements slowly reduced tariffs worldwide. Efforts to revamp the international monetary system after World War II improved exchange rate stability, fostering record growth in global finance.
Monetary economics is the branch of economics that studies the different theories of money: it provides a framework for analyzing money and considers its functions, and it considers how money can gain acceptance purely because of its convenience as a public good. The discipline has historically prefigured, and remains integrally linked to, macroeconomics. This branch also examines the effects of monetary systems, including regulation of money and associated financial institutions and international aspects.
Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to affect monetary and other financial conditions to accomplish broader objectives like high employment and price stability. Further purposes of a monetary policy may be to contribute to economic stability or to maintain predictable exchange rates with other currencies. Today most central banks in developed countries conduct their monetary policy within an inflation targeting framework, whereas the monetary policies of most developing countries' central banks target some kind of a fixed exchange rate system. A third monetary policy strategy, targeting the money supply, was widely followed during the 1980s, but has diminished in popularity since then, though it is still the official strategy in a number of emerging economies.
The impossible trinity is a concept in international economics and international political economy which states that it is impossible to have all three of the following at the same time:
John Brian Taylor is the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
A currency crisis is a type of financial crisis, and is often associated with a real economic crisis. A currency crisis raises the probability of a banking crisis or a default crisis. During a currency crisis the value of foreign denominated debt will rise drastically relative to the declining value of the home currency. Generally doubt exists as to whether a country's central bank has sufficient foreign exchange reserves to maintain the country's fixed exchange rate, if it has any.
The Mundell–Fleming model, also known as the IS-LM-BoP model, is an economic model first set forth (independently) by Robert Mundell and Marcus Fleming. The model is an extension of the IS–LM model. Whereas the traditional IS-LM model deals with economy under autarky, the Mundell–Fleming model describes a small open economy.
The Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) is an economic theory developed by the Austrian School of economics seeking to explain how business cycles occur. The theory views business cycles as the consequence of excessive growth in bank credit due to artificially low interest rates set by a central bank or fractional reserve banks. The Austrian business cycle theory originated in the work of Austrian School economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974 in part for his work on this theory.
George Selgin is an American economist. He is Senior Fellow and Director Emeritus of the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, where he is editor-in-chief of the center's blog, Alt-M, Professor Emeritus of economics at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, and an associate editor of Econ Journal Watch. Selgin formerly taught at George Mason University, the University of Hong Kong, and West Virginia University.
Maurice Moses "Maury" Obstfeld is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley and previously Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The Great Moderation is a period in the United States of America starting from the mid-1980s until at least 2007 characterized by the reduction in the volatility of business cycle fluctuations in developed nations compared with the decades before. It is believed to be caused by institutional and structural changes, particularly in central bank policies, in the second half of the twentieth century.
A global saving glut is a situation in which desired saving exceeds desired investment. By 2005 Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, expressed concern about the "significant increase in the global supply of saving" and its implications for monetary policies, particularly in the United States. Although Bernanke's analyses focused on events in 2003 to 2007 that led to the 2007–2009 financial crisis, regarding GSG countries and the United States, excessive saving by the non-financial corporate sector (NFCS) is an ongoing phenomenon, affecting many countries. Bernanke's global saving glut (GSG) hypothesis argued that increased capital inflows to the United States from GSG countries were an important reason that U.S. longer-term interest rates from 2003 to 2007 were lower than expected.
Richard Harris Clarida is an American economist who served as the 21st Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve from 2018 to 2022. Clarida resigned his post on January 14, 2022, to return from public service leave to teach at Columbia University for the spring term of 2022. He is the C. Lowell Harriss Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Columbia University and, from 2006 until September 2018 and from October 2022 to the present, a Global Strategic Advisor for PIMCO. He is notable for his contributions to dynamic stochastic general equilibrium theory and international monetary economics. He is a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and is a recipient of the Treasury Medal. He also was a proponent of the theory that inflation was transitory during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas is a French economist who has been the Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund since 2022. Gourinchas is also the S.K. and Angela Chan Professor of Management at the University of California, Berkeley. At the University of California, he also directs the Clausen Center for International Business and Policy and is affiliated with the Haas School of Business. His research focuses on macroeconomics, in particular international macroeconomics and international finance. In 2008, Gourinchas received the Prize of the Best Young Economist of France.
Graciela Kaminsky is a professor of economics and international affairs at George Washington University and a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Kaminsky studied economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she received her Ph.D. In 1984 she did a brief research stay at the Argentine Central Bank, later in 1985 she moved to San Diego as an assistant professor at the University of California. In 1992 she worked on the board of governors of the US Federal Reserve System, later in 1998 she was appointed a full professor at George Washington University, where she works at the Elliot School of International Affairs. Kaminsky has been a visiting scholar at the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Spain, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and the Central Bank of France.
Moritz Schularick is a German economist, who is Professor of Economics at Sciences Po Paris and the University of Bonn. He works in the fields of macrofinance, banking and financial stability, as well as international finance, political economy, and economic history.
