I’ve been looking at some of the essays in [amazon_link id=”0262027348″ target=”_blank” ]What Have We Learned: Macroeconomic Policy After the Crisis[/amazon_link]. It’s edited by a chandelier of luminaries – George Akerlof, Olivier Blanchard, David Romer and Joseph Stiglitz. The contributors are equally distinguished, including Janet Yellen, Mervyn King, Stan Fischer, Andy Haldane, Helene Rey, Jean Tirole…. and more. The essays I’ve read – and my focus has been the ones about implications for macroeconomics itself rather than specific areas of macro policy – are very interesting.

Collectively, this book adds up to an acceptance by about the most impressive cast list of macroeconomists you can imagine, that actually macro does need a lot of rethinking. Blanchard writes: “The contours of future macroeconomic policy remain vague.” Structures of policy and thinking about the relations between monetary, fiscal and macroprudential policy, is still evolving. Stiglitz, more pugnacious as one might expect, writes: “Market economies on their own are not necessarily efficient, stable, self-correcting.” George Akerlof is kinder on the profession – he says that while macroeconomists failed to predict the crisis, there has been successful post-crisis management with “good economics and common sense.” But David Romer worries that macroeconomists are not in a position to prevent another crisis: “The relatively modest changes of the types discussed [in the book] – and that policymakers are putting into place in some cases – are helpful but unlikely to be enough to prevent future financial shocks from inflicting large economic harms.” He says the academic and policy communities have not given enough serious consideration to deeper ideas and reforms.

I’m on the Romer and Stiglitz side of the debate. Still, even if you’re at the radical end, the other essays, ranging over fiscal policy, financial regulation, exchange rate arrangements, capital account issues and monetary and macroprudential policy, look very interesting. Some chapters seem standout – for instance Claudio Borio on the financial cycle, the whole section on regulation. It’s a conference volume – looks like it was an outstanding conference.

[amazon_image id=”0262027348″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]What Have We Learned?: Macroeconomic Policy After the Crisis[/amazon_image]