For those who do not follow the ins and outs of academic macroeconomics, it is perhaps useful to say that there has been an ongoing struggle in recent decades between what is sometimes called freshwater and saltwater economics.
The EU has struggled to address the financial crisis that hit several member states in the eurozone, including Greece, Italy, and Spain, in the late 2000s.
Starting in the Great Recession of 2007-9, the Federal Reserves started a policy of “quantitative easing,” in which the Fed held substantial quantities of financial assets like US Treasury bonds and federally guaranteed mortgage-based debt. The problem at the time was that the Fed had reduced its policy interest rate to near-zero. The idea was that if the Fed held such assets, then interest rates could be somewhat lower, compared to a situation where these assets were being sold in financial markets.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought a surge of telemedicine, especially when public and private health insurers became willing to reimburse for it.
Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh delivered the 2023 Presidential Address to the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association on the subject of “The remote work revolution: Impact on real estate values and the urban environment” (Real Estate Economics, January2023, pp. 7-48, subscription or library access required).
One might expect that certain sectors of the economy will have faster productivity growth than others: for example, productivity seems likely to grow faster for semiconductor manufacturers than for a gas station.
Lebanese supermarkets have started pricing items in US dollars instead of the local currency, which has suffered a dramatic decline due to the country's ongoing economic crisis.