Macroeconomic modeling has been one of the most important and influential areas of economic research. This book presents contributions from the leading researchers working in this area as part of the ongoing research project sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council, Bank of England and UK Treasury. The papers combine a description of the latest techniques used in modeling the economy with an account of the way that models can be used for purposes of policy analysis. It is designed for use by advanced students and professional economists.

The rational expectations revolution and other developments in economics (notably game theory) have fundamentally altered the application of optimal control theory to economic forecasting and planning. In particular, they have shown that economic systems cannot be modeled simplistically on physical systems. However, as the authors show, these developments have greatly enhanced our understanding of how an economy functions, and now make it possible for optimal control theory to be applied much more effectively to economic modeling and planning.

Many of the assumptions that underpin mainstream macroeconomic models have been challenged as a result of the traumatic events of the recent financial crisis. Thus, until recently, it was widely agreed that although the stock of money had a role to play, in practice it could be ignored as long as we used short-term nominal interest rates as the instrument of policy because money and other credit markets would clear at the given policy rate. However, very early on in the financial crisis interest rates effectively hit zero percent and so central banks had to resort to a wholly new set of...