The use of fiscal policy as a stabilization device has all but vanished, more or less explicitly in Europe and de facto in the United States. The practical consequences have not been entirely satisfactory, in either place. So it is important and timely that the Oxford Review is devoting a...

In recent years, a case has been made against the use of fiscal policy for stabilization purposes. Real business cycle theory, which portrays the economy as being in global intertemporal equilibrium, concludes that fiscal policy is useless, while the Ricardian equivalence hypothesis concludes...

For various reasons ? empirical, technical and casual ? modern (neo-classical) growth theory has centered its attention on steady-state exponential growth. When the models are intented to serve as a guide to policy, the tacit presumption is that the goal of growth policy is to increase the...

I was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 23, 1924, the oldest of three children. My parents were themselves the children of immigrants. They had to earn a living as soon as they finished secondary school. So my sisters, my cousins and I were the first generation of our family to attend a...

Interview with Professor Robert Solow at the 1st Meeting of Laureates in Economic Sciences in Lindau, Germany, September 1-4, 2004. Interviewer is freelance journalist Marika Griehsel.

I have been told that everybody has dreams, but that some people habitually forget them even before they wake up. That seems to be what happens to me. So I do not know if I have ever dreamt about giving this Lecture. I know that I have been in this room before, but that was in real life, and I...

This manifesto challenges a pernicious orthodoxy that has gripped Europe's policy makers. It is that demand- and supply-side policies must have different aims, that a limited number of supply-side policies are to be devoted to fighting unemployment, and that demand management (and particularly...

This chapter is an exposition, rather than a survey, of the one-sector neoclassical growth model. It describes how the model is constructed as a simplified description of the real side of a growing capitalist economy that happens to be free of fluctuations in aggregate demand. Once that is done,...