Job Loss in Mainstream Macro Modeling, Part II

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Two weeks ago, the GEM Blog advised macro theorists, wishing to solve longstanding job-loss puzzles and satisfy their desire for stabilization-policy relevancy, to abandon Ptolemaic tinkering with endogenous market frictions. They must instead turn their attention to solving the fundamental … 
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Job Loss in Mainstream Modeling, Part I

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Modern macro theory is a quagmire of seemingly insoluble puzzles. A prime example is that the New Neoclassical Synthesis (NNS), the consensus macro framework organized around dynamic market-centric general equilibrium, produces much more mild recessions than is consistent with the … 
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The GEM Project and Aggregate Demand

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The GEM Project’s fundamental contribution to stabilization-relevant macroeconomics is its reworking of aggregate supply. In particular, it derives meaningful wage rigidity, capable of rationally suppressing wage recontracting, from axiomatic principles. GEM aggregate supply better reflects the highly-specialized, large-scale production of … 
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GOBBLEDYGOOK

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My choice for this morning’s beach reading (with coffee) was William Fellner’s 1976 essay, “Theoretical Foundations of the Failure of Demand-Management Policies” in the Journal of Economic Literature. I hoped that Fellner would provide some respite from consistently discouraging mainstream … 
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Robots and Macro Stability

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I just read a provocative paper, “Technology at Work: The Future of Innovation and Employment” (Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, 2015) by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne. The authors conclusion is eye-catching: Within a decade or two, roughly half … 
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Crushed Retirements

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The retirement-funding vehicle, 401(k), may be the most recognizable name-in-numbers in the country. In a transition that began in the 1980s, defined-contribution, self-managed 401(k)’s replaced (outside of government employment) defined-benefit, employer-managed plans. Among workers who participate in firm-sponsored retirement plans, … 
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Meta-Externalities: Pigou and Coase

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This post takes an admittedly wonkish look at the nature and consequences of externalities in coherent general equilibrium macroeconomics. My particular interest here is meta-externalities, the under-appreciated macro application of the textbook literature long associated with the pioneering work of … 
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Ronald Coase

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Ronald Coase, a 20th-century economic theorist, is the intellectual Godfather of generalized-exchange macroeconomics. The opening passage of his 1981 Nobel Lecture could be used to introduce the GEM Project: “My contribution to economics has been to urge the inclusion in … 
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Black-Box Firms

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 The GEM Project generalizes rational exchange from the marketplace to highly specialized workplaces that are restricted by costly asymmetric employer-employee information. Economists know that in such circumstances markets cannot efficiently price labor. That is why large complex establishments price labor … 
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