TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chari,V. V.
AU  - Kehoe,Patrick J.
TI  - The Heterogeneous State of Modern Macroeconomics: A Reply to Solow
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13655
PY  - 2007
Y2  - November 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13655
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13655.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Varadarajan V. Chari
Department of Economics
University of Minnesota
1035 Heller Hall
271 - 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Tel: 612/626-5171
Fax: (612) 624-0209
E-Mail: varadarajanvchari@gmail.com

Patrick Kehoe
Research Department
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
90 Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, MN  55480-0291
Tel: 612/204-5525
Fax: 612/204-5515
E-Mail: pkehoe@res.mpls.frb.fed.us
AB  - Robert Solow has criticized our 2006 Journal of Economic Perspectives essay describing "Modern Macroeconomics in Practice." Solow eloquently voices the commonly heard complaint that too much macroeconomic work today starts with a model with a single type of agent. We argue that modern macroeconomics may not end too far from where Solow prefers. He is also critical of how modern macroeconomists use data to construct models. Specifically, he seems to think that calibration is the only way that our models encounter data. To the contrary, we argue that modern macroeconomics uses a wide variety of empirical methods and that this big-tent approach has served macroeconomics well. Solow also questions our claim that modern macroeconomics is firmly grounded in economic theory. We disagree and explain why.
ER  -