In the News
In the News
News stories about the most recent BPEA conference and papers.
March 23, 2012, The New York Times
"Recessions are generally regarded as abnormal disruptions and recoveries as inevitable returns to normalcy — in large part because that is how the economy has behaved for more than a century. Even after the Great Depression, growth returned to its long-term trend; it just took a while. The bleaker view – which remains, to be sure, the view of a distinct minority — is that the years before the recession were abnormally good, and that while the recession was abnormally bad, reality lies halfway in between. The present situation, in other words, is about as good as it gets. A paper that will be presented Thursday afternoon at a conference organized by the Brookings Institution is the latest contribution to this literature."
March 22, 2012, The Wall Street Journal
"A temporary boost of government spending can help spur an economic recovery when interest rates are near zero, a former top economic adviser to President Barack Obama argued in a paper released Thursday at a Brookings Institution conference."
March 22, 2012, Bloomberg BusinessWeek
"Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said the central bank may be able to limit inflation as economic growth picks up by clarifying the changes that will prompt it to raise the main interest rate."
March 23, 2012, Reuters
"The economic recovery will remain sluggish for years because many consumers have made little headway in paying down debt, according to new research from a former Federal Reserve economist. Karen Dynan, now a fellow at Brookings Institution, argues that the process of reducing debt, which economists call deleveraging, has been far too slow to lay the groundwork for a more rapid economic rebound."
March 23, 2012, Reuters
"The financial turmoil still dogging Europe is most often described as a debt crisis. But sovereign debt is only part of the problem, according to new research from Jay Shambaugh, economist at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. The other two prongs of what he describes as three coexisting crises are the region’s troubled banks and the prospect of an imminent recession."