Motivated by policy debates emerging from the U.S. Great Recession and Eurozone crisis, I study the stabilization role of monetary, fiscal, and macroprudential policies in response to short-run fluctuations. In the first essay on "Unemployment Insurance in Macroeconomic Stabilization", I characterize the role of unemployment insurance (UI) generosity as a particular instrument of fiscal policy, and use my framework to quantitatively evaluate the employment and welfare effects of UI extensions in the U.S. over 2008-13. In the second essay on "Labor Market Frictions in a Monetary Union", I study stabilization trade-offs and optimal monetary policy in a monetary union where labor markets are frictional and heterogeneous across member states, with implications for the sustainability of the Euro and policy of the ECB. In the third essay on "Firm vs. Bank Leverage over the Business Cycle", I develop a general equilibrium model explaining the contrasting cyclical behavior of non-financial corporate and bank leverage in U.S. data, and study its implications for macroprudential regulation in banking. Methodologically, these essays share a focus on building theoretical models of closed and open economies to address policy-relevant questions in macroeconomics, drawing on additional ideas from related fields such as public economics and finance.

Hassan Bougrine, Louis-Philippe Rochon and the expert contributors to this book explore issues of economic growth and full employment; presenting a clear explanation to stagnation, recessions and crises, including the latest Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8. With a central focus on the role played by government spending, deficits and debt as well as the setting of interest rates, the chapters propose alternative policies that can be used by central banks and fiscal authorities to deal with problems of income inequality, unemployment and slow productivity.

In one of the foremost critiques of the widespread view that in market-based economics the fluctuations of the marketplace are essentially self-regulating, Eli Ginzberg argues the reverse. He asserts that government regulation or intervention to provide stability in the capitalist marketplace is a necessity. In this classic statement of macroeconomic theory, Ginzberg argues that self-directed stable economies, devoid of an appreciation of social and psychological factors, are essentially illusory. The ability of strong blocs--corporate, labor, and agricultural--to control the market in the hope of bettering their economic position places great difficulties in the path of securing a stable economy. For Ginzberg, economic fluctuations in the decade preceding the Great Depression can largely be explained by the interaction of technological, psychological, and monetary factors. Without these factors being subjected to some sort of control, economic stability must remain an illusion. The current period of a significant fall-off in earnings, profits, and full employment also followed a decade of unparalleled monetary growth. The concerns Ginzberg raised are relevant once again. It may turn out that the "neoliberalism" of the present has something to say in response to the free market/free society premises currently in vogue. In a brilliant introductory essay, Nobel Laureate Robert M. Solow offers an impressive report card on The Illusion of Economic Stability: "The prose is tighter and more aphoristic than late Ginzberg, and the tone is more detached, even sardonic." He concludes by admitting that a volatile stock market is one more reason why automatic economic stability seems as illusory today as it did when the book first appeared.

This 1986 book examines some of the main issues that have characterized macroeconomics: the debate between 'monetarists' and 'Keynesians'; the response to demand shocks and supply shocks, by which the monetary authorities control aggregrate nominal income and the use and relevance of the money supply as a target; and the consumption function and the determinants of wealth. It shows that Keynesian stabilization policies succeeded in reducing instability due to demand shocks dramatically, but that no aggregrate demand policy can stabilize both price and employment simultaneously after a supply shock. However, by assigning an overall 'social cost' to (excess) unemployment and (initially) unexpected inflation, an optimism path can be derived. In looking at the consumption function and determinants of wealth the empirical evidence is shown to be most consistent with the life-cycle hypothesis. A concluding section is devoted to the impact on private and national society of the 'social security revolution'.