Reading list: History of Economic Thought: Business Cycle Macroeconomics

I'm aiming to keep this one brief. These are a mixture of navel-gazing history-of-thought papers and economic history papers. Business cycle macroeconomics is faddish, perhaps more faddish than any other area of economics, and current events have a way of powerfully shaping the research agenda. So you must read history of thought in the context of economic history. The best example of this blend between HoT and economic history is DeLong's 1997 paper.

Older controversies:

• Samuelson and Solow, "Analytical Aspects of Anti-Inflation Policy," 1960.
• Friedman, "The Role of Monetary Policy," 1968.
• Modigliani, "The Monetarist Controversy," 1977.
• Tobin, "Stabilization Policy Ten Years After," 1980.
• DeLong, "America's Peacetime Inflation: The 1970s," 1997.

New controversies / state of play c.2007 / the evolving research agenda:

• Cochrane, "Shocks," 1994.
• Goodfriend and King, "The New Neoclassical Synthesis and the Role of Monetary Policy," 1997.
• Woodford, "Revolution and Evolution in Twentieth-Century Macroeconomics," 1999.
• Blanchard, "What do we know about macroeconomics that Fisher and Wicksell did not?" 2000.
• Lucas, "Macroeconomic Priorities," 2004.
• Rebelo, "Real Business Cycle Models: Past, Present, and Future," 2005.
• Akerlof, "The Missing Motivation in Macroeconomics," 2007.
• Blanchard, "The State of Macro," 2008.
• Gali, "The New Keynesian Approach to Monetary Policy Analysis," 2008.
• Svensson, "What have economists learned about monetary policy over the past 50 years?" 2008.
• Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan, "New Keynesian Models: Not Yet Useful," 2009.
• Woodford, "Convergence in Macroeconomics: Elements of the New Synthesis," AEJ 2009.
• Shimer, "Convergence in Macroeconomics: The Labor Wedge," AEJ 2009.

Commentary on the profession after the financial crisis of 2007-08:

• Buiter, "The unfortunate uselessness of most academic monetary economics," 2009.
• Krugman, "How did economists get it so wrong?" 2009.
• Cochrane, "How did Paul Krugman get it so wrong?" 2009.
• Morley, "The emperor has no clothes," 2010.
• Athreya, "Economics is Hard: Don’t Let Bloggers Tell You Otherwise," 2010.
• Kocherlakota, "Some thoughts on the state of macro," 2010.
• Reis, "Is something really wrong with macroeconomics?" 2017.

Nobel lectures:

• Solow, "Growth Theory and After," 1987.
• Lucas, "Monetary Neutrality," 1995.
• Kydland, "Quantitative Aggregate Macroeconomics," 2004.
• Prescott, "The Transformation of Economic Policy and Research," 2004.
• Sims, "Statistical Modeling of Monetary Policy and its Effects," 2011.

Relevant JEP symposia:

• Winter 1993, "Keynesian Economics Today"
• Fall 1995, "The Monetary Transmission Mechanism"
• Winter 1996, "Computational Macroeconomics"
• Winter 1997, "The NAIRU"
• Spring 1999, "Business Cycles"
• Fall 2006, "Macroeconomic Lessons"
• Fall 2007, "Monetary Policy"
• Winter 2009, "The Credit Crunch"
• Winter 2010, "Financial Plumbing"
• Fall 2010, "Macro After the Crisis"
• Winter 2011, "Financial Regulation"

Research statements by:

• Fernandez-Villaverde and Rubio-Ramirez (2006)
• Nakamura (2012)
• Steinsson (2012)
• Gorodnichenko (2016)

(links live as of 2017-09-26)