大时代下宏观经济学面临的挑战与变革

Challenges and Changes Facing Macroeconomics in the Great Era

文章通过总结近20年来大时代的五大变化对于宏观经济学界提出的四大挑战,深入分析了宏观经济学界对于这些挑战所进行的实践创新和理论创新,指出美国金融危机带来的对于金融失灵问题和宏观哲学的反思,长期停滞带来对于低利率和经济停滞的反思,新冠肺炎疫情和俄乌战争带来对极端状态下各种经济运行指标和经济逻辑的反思,以及数字技术革命带来对宏观经济学的微观假设和经济传递机制变化的反思,已构成了未来宏观经济学发展的4大主线,这些理论上的发展无论是边际性的调整还是革命性的重构都需要我们用开放的态度来拥抱。

This paper summarizes the five changes of the Great Era in the past 20 years:The first is,the global depression caused by the American financial crisis in 2008.The second is that,since 2010,the world has fallen into“secular stagnation”.The third is that,the pandemic and stagnation caused by the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020.The fourth is that,the digital economy era opened after the wave of informatization.Thw fifth is that,the world began to enter a century of unprecedented changes.The above five aspects show that the world economy has undergone structural upheaval under the superposition of various forces.This upheaval is very different from the generally assumed general market economic environment,which has led to great changes in macroeconomics,thus posing the following four challenges to macroeconomics:First,why did the“scientific”economic policy not prevent mankind from economic crisis?Second,does the emergence of“secular stagnation”mean the deep failure of economics and economic policy?Third,the Great Pandemic causes the weakness of macroeconomics,so will epidemic economics trigger a revolution in economics?Fourth,new technology,new model and new economy bring new challenges to the impact of micro foundation.The four challenges correspond to the four typical facts respectively.They appear at the same time,which have not been completely encountered in other times.The superposition of shocks deserves our attention.We are in a super Great Era.Compared with the traditional system,the new operating system shows a strong fracture.This paper deeply analyzes the practical and theoretical innovations made by the macroeconomic community in response to these challenges,and points out that the reflections on financial failure and macro philosophy brought about by the financial crisis,the reflections on low interest rates and economic stagnation brought about by long-term stagnation,the reflections on various economic indicators and economic logic under extreme conditions brought about by the epidemic and the war,and the reflections on micro assumptions of macroeconomics and changes in economic transmission mechanism brought about by digital technology revolution,have constituted the four main lines of the future development of macroeconomics.No matter whether these theoretical developments are marginal adjustment or revolutionary reconstruction,we need to embrace them with an open attitude.