Congratulations to Another WEAI Past President in the News!
Janet Yellen Confirmed as US Treasury Secretary
Yellen served as WEAI President 2003-2004, delivering her Presidential Address at the 79th Annual Conference, and published in Economic Inquiry, January 2006. And on the lighter side, she now has a "Hamilton" style song written about her! From NPR's Marketplace, take a listen to "Who's Yellen Now?"
And from Economic Inquiry we invite you to read:
STABILIZATION POLICY: A RECONSIDERATION
by JANET L. YELLEN and GEORGE A. AKERLOF*
Should stabilization policy be a macroeconomic priority? Most central banks consider it a goal, but Robert Lucas has contended that policies to stabilize output, even if effective, yield negligible welfare gains. This article critiques Lucas’s argument. Existing literature suggests nontrivial benefits from stabilization due to nonlinearity of the social welfare function and of the short-run Phillips curve. Our analysis and examination of the evidence from periods of prolonged high unemployment also suggest further significant gains to stabilization since the ‘‘accelerationist’’ hypothesis does not seem to hold in times of very low inflation.