Editorial

Abstract

The NBER’s thirty-fourth Annual Conference on Macroeconomics brought together leading scholars to present, discuss, and debate six research papers on central issues in contemporary macroeconomics. In addition, James Stock, former chief economist and director of research at the International Monetary Fund, delivered a thought-provoking afterdinner talk on the economics of climate change. Video recordings of the presentations of the papers and the after-dinner talk are all accessible on the web page of the NBER Annual Conference on Macroeconomics (https:// www.nber.org/macroannualconference2019/macroannual2019.html). These videos,whichmake the content of the conferencemorewidely accessible, are a useful complement to this volume. This conference volume contains edited versions of the six papers presented at the conference, each followed by two written comments by leading scholars and a summary discussion of the debates that followed each paper. The volume also contains a paper, “Climate Change, Climate Policy, and Economic Growth,” by James Stock, based on his dinner talk. The paper provides an extremely useful introduction to the topic of climate change and climate change policy formacroeconomists. The paper makes four key points. First, simple time-series regression models confirm that essentially all the warming over the past 140 years is due to human activity. Second, policy has a crucial role toplay ifwe are to succeed in decarbonizing the economy. Third, current policies will not succeed in decarbonizing the economy in time to prevent severe damage from climate change. Fourth, the politics, as opposed to the economics, of Pigouvian carbon pricing do notwork. This suggests the importance of considering other policies, especially those that drive low-carbon technical innovation. There was no discussant for the paper because of its origin as a dinner talk. We are grateful to James Stock for taking the time to write up his comments on this vitally important topic.