NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2014, Volume 29

The twenty-ninth edition of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual continues to feature theoretical and empirical research on central issues in contemporary macroeconomics. This volume’s papers take up important policy-relevant questions and open new debates that should continue in the years to come. Two papers 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.