This year, the NBER Macroeconomics Annual celebrates its thirtieth volume. The first two papers examine China's macroeconomic development. "Trends and Cycles in China's Macroeconomy" by Chun Chang, Kaiji Chen, Daniel F. Waggoner, and Tao Zha outlines the key characteristics of growth and business cycles in China. "Demystifying the Chinese Housing Boom" by Hanming Fang, Quanlin Gu, Wei Xiong, and Li-An Zhou constructs a new house price index, showing that Chinese house prices have grown by ten percent per year over the past decade. The third paper, "External and Public Debt Crises" by Cristina Arellano, Andrew Atkeson, and Mark Wright, asks why there appear to be large differences across countries and subnational jurisdictions in the effect of rising public debts on economic outcomes. The fourth, "Networks and the Macroeconomy: An Empirical Exploration" by Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, and William Kerr, explains how the network structure of the US economy propagates the effect of gross output productivity shocks across upstream and downstream sectors. The fifth and sixth papers investigate the usefulness of surveys of household's beliefs for understanding economic phenomena. "Expectations and Investment," by Nicola Gennaioli, Yueran Ma, and Andrei Shleifer, demonstrates that a chief financial officer's expectations of a firm's future earnings growth is related to both the planned and actual future investment of that firm. "Declining Desire to Work and Downward Trends in Unemployment and Participation" by Regis Barnichon and Andrew Figura shows that an increasing number of prime-age Americans who are not in the labor force report no desire to work and that this decline accelerated during the second half of the 1990s.

This volume contains six studies on current topics in macroeconomics. The first shows that while assuming rational expectations is unrealistic, a finite-horizon forward planning model can yield results similar to those of a rational expectations equilibrium. The second explores the aggregate risk of the U.S. financial sector, and in particular whether it is safer now than before the 2008 financial crisis. The third analyzes "factorless income," output that is not measured as capital or labor income. Next, a study argues that the financial crisis increased the perceived risk of a very bad economic and financial outcome, and explores the propagation of large, rare shocks. The next paper documents the substantial recent changes in the manufacturing sector and the decline in employment among prime-aged Americans since 2000. The last paper analyzes the dynamic macroeconomic effects of border adjustment taxes.

The thirty-first edition of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual features theoretical and empirical research on central issues in contemporary macroeconomics. The first two papers are rigorous and data-driven analyses of the European financial crisis. The third paper introduces a new set of facts about economic growth and financial ratios as well as a new macrofinancial database for the study of historical financial booms and busts. The fourth paper studies the historical effects of Federal Reserve efforts to provide guidance about the future path of the funds rate. The fifth paper explores the distinctions between models of price setting and associated nominal frictions using data on price setting behavior. The sixth paper considers the possibility that the economy displays nonlinear dynamics that lead to cycles rather than long-term convergence to a steady state. The volume also includes a short paper on the decline in the rate of global economic growth.

The twenty-seventh volume of the "NBER Macroeconomics Annual" features two papers that illuminate causes of the recent financial crisis: how firms accessed credit during the financial crisis and how changing price and treatment of risk in mortgage lending was measured in the UK in the decades before the crisis. Other papers in this volume include a study of individual prices over time that draws out the implications of observed price adjustment for macroeconomic models of price stickiness, a focus on the implications of microeconomic estimates of labor supply for the determination of employment rates, a look at the empirical validity of the Keynesian view of reasons for employment declines during recessions, and an innovative paper that measures the efficacy of fiscal stimulus by looking at the economic impact of changes in federal highway spending across US states.

The thirty-first edition of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual features theoretical and empirical research on central issues in contemporary macroeconomics. The first two papers are rigorous and data-driven analyses of the European financial crisis. The third paper introduces a new set of facts about economic growth and financial ratios as well as a new macrofinancial database for the study of historical financial booms and busts. The fourth paper studies the historical effects of Federal Reserve efforts to provide guidance about the future path of the funds rate. The fifth paper explores the distinctions between models of price setting and associated nominal frictions using data on price setting behavior. The sixth paper considers the possibility that the economy displays nonlinear dynamics that lead to cycles rather than long-term convergence to a steady state. The volume also includes a short paper on the decline in the rate of global economic growth.

The thirty-fourth volume of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual features theoretical and empirical studies of issues in contemporary macroeconomics and a keynote address by James Stock, a member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2014. Chong-en Bai, Chang-Tai Hsieh, and Zheng Song examine the "special deals" provided by Chinese local governments to favored private firms and their effects on economic growth. Matias Covarrubias, German Gutierrez, and Thomas Philippon study the evolution of profits, investment, and market shares in US industries over the past forty years and find evidence of inefficient concentration and barriers to entry since 2000. David Debortoli, Jordi Gali, and Luca Gambetti assess whether recent economic performance was affected by a binding zero lower bound constraint on the interest rate. Michael McLeay and Silvana Tenreyro explain why it is difficult to empirically identify the Phillips curve (a key element of the policy framework used by central banks) using aggregate data. The authors suggest using regional variation in unemployment and inflation to estimate the relationship between these variables. Margherita Borella, Mariacristina De Nardi, and Fang Yang examine the effects of shorter life expectancies, higher medical expenses, and lower wages for white, non-college-educated Americans born in the 1960s on labor supply and retirement savings. Nir Jaimovich, Sergio Rebelo, Arlene Wong, and Miao Ben Zhang investigate the role that increases in the quality of the goods consumed ("trading up") played in the rise of the skill premium that occurred in the last four decades.

Volume 32 of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual features six theoretical and empirical studies of important issues in contemporary macroeconomics, and a keynote address by former IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard. In one study, SeHyoun Ahn, Greg Kaplan, Benjamin Moll, Thomas Winberry, and Christian Wolf examine the dynamics of consumption expenditures in non-representative-agent macroeconomic models. In another, John Cochrane asks which macro models most naturally explain the post-financial-crisis macroeconomic environment, which is characterized by the co-existence of low and nonvolatile inflation rates, near-zero short-term interest rates, and an explosion in monetary aggregates. Manuel Adelino, Antoinette Schoar, and Felipe Severino examine the causes of the lending boom that precipitated the recent U.S. financial crisis and Great Recession. Steven Durlauf and Ananth Seshadri investigate whether increases in income inequality cause lower levels of economic mobility and opportunity. Charles Manski explores the formation of expectations, considering the efficacy of directly measuring beliefs through surveys as an alternative to making the assumption of rational expectations. In the final research paper, Efraim Benmelech and Nittai Bergman analyze the sharp declines in debt issuance and the evaporation of market liquidity that coincide with most financial crises. Blanchard's keynote address discusses which distortions are central to understanding short-run macroeconomic fluctuations.