Book Release: Facing Up to Low Productivity Growth

The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) launched its new conference volume, Facing Up to Low Productivity Growth, on March 20, 2019. The Institute’s fellows Karen Dynan, Jeromin Zettelmeyer, and Adam S. Posen, as well as Anna Stansbury of Harvard University, provided remarks. Dynan discussed the implications of slow productivity growth for fiscal policy. Stansbury provided remarks on inequality in rich countries, and how the ongoing low productivity growth affects policy recommendations to address inequality. Zettelmeyer presented on the implications of slowing productivity growth for emerging-market economies and international trade.

Stansbury is a PhD candidate in economics at Harvard University and coauthor with Lawrence H. Summers of a chapter in the new volume. Her research focuses on macroeconomics and labor economics, in particular income and wealth inequality, poverty, and unemployment.

Zettelmeyer was appointed as the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Institute in January 2019 and has been a senior fellow at the Institute since September 2016. He was previously the director-general for economic policy at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy from 2014 to 2016.

Dynan has been a nonresident senior fellow at the Institute since March 2017 and is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. She served as assistant secretary for economic policy and chief economist at the US Department of the Treasury from 2014 to 2017.