BARCELONA MACROECONOMICS SUMMER SCHOOL 2008 (BMSS'08)

- The basic New Keynesian model
- Optimal monetary policy in the basic New Keynesian model
- Sources of policy trade-offs: discretion vs. commitment
- Labor market imperfections and monetary policy

- Beyond incentives: the role of expectations in macroeconomic policy design
- Controlling inflation with limited knowledge
- Social learning, employment and redistribution
- Avoiding economic recessions
- Learning macroeconomic institutional design from history?

- The world distribution of income
- Growth, poverty and inequality: the role of globalization
- Neoclassical growth theory: the power of diminishing returns
- The role of incentives
- Government, taxation, the Welfare State and growth
- Ideas and growth: R&D, patents. AIDS, malaria and generics
- The effectiveness of international aid in promoting economic development. Randomized field
experiments
- The tragedy of Africa: Diagnostic and priorities

- Entry regulation, finance, and economic growth
- Institutions, geography, and trade as deep deteminants of economic development
- Income as a determinant of civil conflict and democracy
- Human capital, comparative advantage, and technological catch up
- Learning about growth from growth regressions

- Sovereign risk, default and restructuring
- Application (1): effects of financial integration in emerging markets
- Application (2): the international financial architecture
- Asset bubbles, financial frictions and capital flows
- Application (3): global imbalances
- Application (4): sources and effects of financial market instability

- The origins of bubbles and lending booms: past, present and future
- Monetary policy and asset prices: how should central banks react to bubbles?
- Credit linkages, multipliers and real effects
- Contagion: measurement and impact
- Alternatives investment vehicles and the rise of a "shadow banking system"
- Ruling out instability: what role for bank supervision and financial regulators?

500 euros

- Fiscal policy analysis in dynamic models
- Sustainability of debt
- Effects of constraints on fiscal policy (debt limits, balanced budgets ...)
- Debt management
- Stabilization policies
- Interaction with monetary policy
- Commitment versus discretion

14:30-16:30 h

- Solutions: Log-linear and second order approximations
- Detrending and extracting cyclical information
- Limited and full information estimation approaches
- Identification
- Model evaluation and policy exercices

Lectures 17.00-19.00 h (10 hours)
Computer demonstrations: 19.00-20.00 h (5 hours)

Materials for class