52nd Annual Faculty Research Lecture

Over the past 50 years, the U.S. and other industrialized economies have experienced the Great Inflation of the 1970s, the Great Moderation that stretched from the mid-1980s to 2007, and the financial crisis and Great Recession of 2008-2009. The actions by central banks such as the Federal Reserve during each of these episodes have been influenced by academic research in monetary economics. And research in monetary economics has in turn been affected by lessons drawn from these policy actions. My lecture will trace these two-way interactions that have led from the heyday of monetarism to an environment of monetary theory (and policy) divorced from money and explore their implications for business cycles, unemployment, and inflation.