IMF Conference

The IMF hosted a Conference on "Rethinking Macro Policy II: First Steps and Early Lessons"

It has now been five years since the outbreak of the global financial crisis. A central question is how the crisis has changed the way we think about macroeconomic policy. The IMF originally tackled this issue at a 2011 conference, which then spawned a book that was published by the MIT Press. Two years later, the time seems right for another assessment. Research has gone on, policies have been tried, debates have been intense. So, the IMF has decided to come back to the same theme. To do this, it has organized a conference on "Rethinking Macro Policy II: First Steps and Early Lessons", which took place at the IMF’s Headquarters in Washington, DC on April 16–17, 2013

The conference brought together leading academics and policymakers from around the globe, as well as representatives from civil society, the private sector, and the media. It was hosted by:

• George Akerlof (University of California, Berkeley and IMF)
  BLOG: The Cat in the Tree and Further Observations: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy
  Read the paper
• Olivier Blanchard (Economic Counselor and Director of Research at the IMF)
  BLOG: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy
  Read the paper
• David Romer (University of California, Berkeley)
  BLOG: Preventing The Next Catastrophe: Where Do We Stand?
  Read the paper
• Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University)
  BLOG: The Lessons of the North Atlantic Crisis for Economic Theory and Policy

Attendance was by invitation only, but the proceedings were webcasted live and available below.

Five years into the crisis, the contours of the macroeconomic policy of the future are only slowly coming into focus. From macroeconomic to financial stability, policy makers have realized that they have to watch many targets. They have also realized that they have potentially many more instruments at their disposal, from macro prudential tools to unconventional monetary policy. But how to map instruments to targets remains very much a work in progress.

--Olivier Blanchard

Introductory video by Olivier Blanchard

Background Paper
Rethinking Macro Policy II: Getting Granular