Greg may be the world’s most influential economist as millions of students, in the US and abroad, have studied introductory economics and intermediate macroeconomics using his leading text books. He’s also been a major US policy player, including serving as Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under Present George W. Bush. But Greg’s greatest contributions have been to macroeconomics. One of his early hits explains that the relatively small costs of individual firms adjusting their prices can lead to slow micro adjustment and remarkably major macroeconomic problems, including exacerbating business cycles. A second major contribution concerns the degree to which households are cash-flow constrained and, as a result, make the economy far more volatile. A third article tests and partially rejects the Solow Model, a central model of national saving. A fourth shows, paradoxically, that competition in the face of monopoly can be inefficient. A fifth helps explain stock market volatility. A sixth helps understand the dynamics of inflation and unemployment based on slow acquisition of information of price setters. Greg describes these contributions as part of our wide ranging, fascinating conversation.
Gregory Mankiw’s Bio
N. Gregory Mankiw is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University. As a student, Greg studied economics at Princeton University and MIT. As a teacher, he has taught macroeconomics, microeconomics, statistics, and principles of economics. Professor Mankiw is a prolific writer and a regular participant in academic and policy debates. His research includes work on price adjustment, consumer behavior, financial markets, monetary and fiscal policy, and economic growth. His published articles have appeared in academic journals, such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and in more widely accessible forums, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.
He has written two popular textbooks—the intermediate-level textbook Macroeconomics (Worth Publishers) and the introductory textbook Principles of Economics (Cengage Learning). Principles of Economics has sold over four million copies and has been translated into twenty languages. In addition to his teaching, research, and writing, Professor Mankiw has been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an adviser to the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and New York, and a member of the ETS test development committee for the advanced placement exam in economics. From 2003 to 2005 he served as Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
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