Impacts

When global economic crisis highlighted the capabilities and limitations of current macroeconomic thinking, more than 60 renowned economists from across the globe gathered in Oxford to chart the future for research. The two day symposium, sponsored by the ESRC, took place at the Oxford Martin School and was organised by Professor John Muellbauer of INET@Oxford.

The symposium clarified that many crucial macroeconomic problems remain and that support for theoretical, empirical and policy related research  is essential. The Symposium Report recommends a diversity of new approaches to macroeconomic research including:

• deepen the range of analytical and mathematical frameworks within the DSGE (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium) approach, incorporating further financial market frictions into models and the roles of policy and regulation in financial markets;
• address a range of issues not previously considered mainstream to the discipline, including agent-based models, other complexity science based approaches, and non-equilibrium modelling;
• import systems-based approaches from modern physics or biology,  including network analysis;
• engage more with further dimensions of micro-economics e.g. behavioural approaches and recent insights as to their biological underpinning;
• place much greater emphasis on the role of evidence.

Read the final report from the Symposium

Key Links:

• DSGE Models and the Financial Crisis by Mark Gertler - Presentation
• Discussion points on Mark Gertler's presentation
• Macroeconomic Models where Agents Choose to Learn: Attention, Disagreement, and Policy Communication by Ricardo Reis - Presentation
• Discussion points on Ricardo Reis's presentation
• Sovereign Debt, Government Myopia and the Financial Sector by Viral Acharya - presentation
• The Contribution of Agent-based Modelling by Scott Page - presentation
• Discussion points on Scott Page's presentation
• Modelling Interactions of Finance and the Real Economy by John Muellbauer - presentation
• Discussion points on John Muellbauer's presentation
• The endogenous dynamics of markets: price impact, feedback loops and instabilities by Jean-Philippe Bouchaud - presentation
• Discussion points on Jean-Philippe Bouchaud's presentation
• Financial Networks and Contagion: Learning from Ecology and Epidemiology by Sujit Kapadia - presentation
• Deciding between Alternative Approaches by David Hendry - presentation
• Discussion points on David Hendry's presentation
• What Macro Do Students Need? by John Beath - presentation
• Discussion points on John Beath's presentation
• Neil Ericssson roundtable: What New Data Does Macro Need?
• Bernhard Winkler roundtable: What New Data Does Macro Need?
• Martin Weale roundtable: What New Data Does Macro Need?