The Unassuming Economist

Akerlof says the topic that has motivated him the most over his 40-year career is unemployment. “I have always thought of unemployment as a terrible thing. In fact that has been the motivation for almost everything I have ever written. A person without a job loses not just his income but often the sense that he is fulfilling the duties expected of him as a human being.” Moreover, he says it has long been his “dream” to have a macroeconomics grounded in the “full range of human emotions and actions: fairness, confidence, greed, identity, procrastination.” To continue reading check the F&D profile.

Also, thanks to Greg Mankiw and Menzie Chinn who featured the profile on their sites.

The Economic Times (India) summarizes my recent work on Information Rigidity in Growth Forecasts: Some Cross-Country Evidence (joint with Herman Stekler and Natalia Tamirisa).

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars hosted a forum to give a grade to the U.S. policy response to the financial crisis. My presentation was on the unemployment crisis.

America’s current unemployment crisis is predominately the result of a pronounced dip in the business cycle, according to a new paper by economists at the International Monetary Fund. But, structural factors, like shortages of highly-skilled laborers, is keeping the jobless rate high, too, the paper finds. Read the rest of Huffington Post’s story.

The price and security of foreign oil has Western policymakers talking more urgently about energy independence — again. But according to Prakash Loungani, an economist and advisor to the IMF’s Research Department, to insulate themselves from the economic effects of oil spikes, countries are going to have to learn to work together.To continue reading see the recent article on the Globalist website.