New Policy Ideas for a New World: Interview with Robert Solow
IMF Blog, April 2, 2011
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: iMFdirect
- Published: April 2, 2011
Overview
- Publication: iMFdirect
- Date: April 2, 2011
- Subject: Interview with Robert Solow—Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Nobel Prize winning economist—on lessons from the global financial crisis and implications for future economic policy.
- Video reference included: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XVtyZknxks]
Main challenges for policymakers today
- Restore a higher level of economic activity in the advanced countries—particularly in this country, in the U.S.—requiring some innovative approaches to policy.
- Take what has been learned from the crisis and look toward the future of economic policy.
Monetary policy
- “The simple dependence on conventional monetary policy—not to be abandoned, of course—but it seems to have come to its limits and one has to move on even to direct fiscal policy or to innovative ways of dealing with money and credit.”
Fiscal policy
- “We are certainly not at the limits of the possibility of public debt … But any aggressive fiscal policy would entail still a bigger buildup of debt, which will have to be settled in the longer run.”
Role of education in economic growth
- “We tend to measure education by input, not output. We count how many years people have been in school … instead of worrying so much about quantities of education, we ought to be thinking about the content.”
About the blog and institution
- IMFBlog is a forum for the views of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff and officials on pressing economic and policy issues of the day.
- The IMF, based in Washington D.C., is an organization of 191 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation and financial stability around the world.
- The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF and its Executive Board.
iMFdirect — April 2, 2011