The goals of the annual NBER Macroeconomics Conference are to present, extend, and apply frontier work in macroeconomics and to stimulate work by macroeconomists in policy issues. Each paper in the Annual is followed by comments and discussion.

Current issues in macroeconomics.

The goals of the annual NBER Macroeconomics Conference are to present, extend, and apply frontier work in macroeconomics and to stimulate work by macroeconomists in policy issues. Each paper in the Annual is followed by comments and discussion. The goals of the annual NBER Macroeconomics Conference are to present, extend, and apply frontier work in macroeconomics and to stimulate work by macroeconomists in policy issues. Each paper in the Annual is followed by comments and discussion.

The twenty-ninth edition of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual continues its tradition of featuring theoretical and empirical research on central issues in contemporary macroeconomics. Two papers in this year’s issue deal with recent economic performance: one analyzes the evolution of aggregate productivity before, during, and after the Great Recession, and the other characterizes the factors that have contributed to slow economic growth following the Great Recession. Another pair of papers tackles the role of information in business cycles. Other contributions address how assumptions about sluggish nominal price adjustment affect the consequences of different monetary policy rules and the role of business cycles in the long-run decline in the share of employment in middle-wage jobs. The final chapter discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the elimination of physical currency.

The NBER Macroeconomics Annual presents pioneering work in macroeconomics by leading academic researchers to an audience of public policymakers and the academic community. Each commissioned paper is followed by comments and discussion. This year's edition provides a mix of cutting-edge research and policy analysis on such topics as productivity and information technology, the increase in wealth inequality, behavioral economics, and inflation.

This annual is designed to stimulate research on problems in applied economics, to bring frontier theoretical developments to a wider audience, and to accelerate the interaction between analytical and empirical research in macroeconomics

What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms—not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological—that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps—gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures—chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.

This is the fourth in a series of annuals from the National Bureau of Economic Research that are designed to stimulate research on problems in applied economics, to bring frontier theoretical developments to a wider audience, and to accelerate the interaction between analytical and empirical research in macroeconomics. Contents: The Monetary History After Twenty-Five Years: New Evidence on the Money-Output Relationship, Christina Romer and David Romer Restrictions on Financial Intermediaries and Implecations for Aggregate Fluctuations: Canada and the U.S., 1870-1908, Stephen Williamson The Thatcher "Miracle", Charles Bean with Jim Symons The Revised NBER Indexes of Coincident and Leading Economic Indicators, James Stock and Mark Watson Consumption, Income, and Interest Rates: The Euler Equation Approach Ten Years Later, John Campbell and N. Gregory Mankiw U.S. Earnings and Income Inequality: Recent Trends, Frank Levy Business Cycle Models with Increasing Returns, Kevin Murphy, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny