Brian C. Albrecht

<p>Many models in macroeconomics ignore money. A new paper by Ricardo Lagos and Shengxing Zhang suggests that is a mistake.</p>

<p>A recent NBER paper calls into question the standard narrative of the financial crisis.</p>

<p>Following the financial crisis and Great Recession, many bloggers (and some economists) have expressed disappointment with the state of macroeconomics. Randall Wright offers a more optimistic perspective.</p>

<p>In a recent <em>Econometrica</em> article, Matthias Doepke and Martin Schneider model money as a standardized unit of account.</p>

<p>Economists have modeled some, but not all, of money’s functions.</p>

<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-aa65d0e3-02d9-c883-4a76-daec4c1faf96">In the 1630s and 1640s, Willem Kieft helped usher in one of the first cases of monetary mismanagement in the new colonies of North America. </span></p>

<p>A plucking up of unemployment is followed by a return down with the same magnitude. But a decline in unemployment does not precede a rise of the same magnitude.</p>

<p>Financial crises come in all shapes and sizes. What could we possibly learn about proper monetary policy?</p>

<p>A new NBER paper shows that credit-induced banking panics are the exception, not the rule.</p>

<p>Where does money come from? There are two reasonable ways to consider the question.</p>