Jordi Galí

Infobox_Scientist
name = Jordi Galí


caption =
birth_date = Birth date and age|1961|1|4
birth_place = Barcelona, Spain
death_date =
death_place =
residence =
nationality = Spaniard
field = Economics
work_institution = Universitat Pompeu Fabra 2001- CREI 1999- New York University 1994-01 Columbia University 1989-94
alma_mater = MIT PhD 1989

doctoral_advisor = Olivier Blanchard
doctoral_students =
known_for = New Keynesian economics
prizes =
religion =
footnotes =

Jordi Galí (born January 4, 1961, Barcelona, Spain) is a Catalan macroeconomist who is regarded as one of the main figures in New Keynesian macroeconomics today. He is currently the director of the Centre de Recerca en Economía Internacional (CREI, the Center for Research in International Economics) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. After obtaining his doctorate from MIT in 1989 under the supervision of Olivier Blanchard, [Galí, Jordi (1994), 'Keeping up with the Joneses: consumption externalities, portfolio choice, and asset prices'. "Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking" 26 (1), pp. 1-8.] he held faculty positions at Columbia University and New York University before moving to Barcelona.

Galí's research centers on the causes of business cycles and on optimal monetary policy, especially through the lens of time series analysis. His studies with Richard Clarida and Mark Gertler suggest that monetary policy in many countries today resembles the Taylor rule, whereas the policy makers of the 1970s failed to follow the Taylor rule. [Clarida, Richard; Mark Gertler; and Jordi Galí (2000), 'Monetary policy rules and macroeconomic stability: theory and some evidence.' "Quarterly Journal of Economics" 115. pp. 147-180.] [Clarida, Richard; Mark Gertler; and Jordi Galí (1998), 'Monetary policy rules in practice: some international evidence.' "European Economic Review" 42 (6), pp. 1033-67.]

Another focus of Galí's research concerns the debate over how central bankers should set interest rates. In some of the simplest New Keynesian macroeconomic models, stabilizing the inflation rate stabilizes the output gap too. [Goodfriend, Marvin, and Robert G. King (1997), 'The New Neoclassical Synthesis and the role of monetary policy'. "NBER Macroeconomics Annual" 12 (1).] If this property were roughly true in reality, it would permit central bankers to pursue a simplified Taylor rule focused only on inflation stabilization, with no need to consider output growth. [ [http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2005/09/mankiw_discusse.html Comments by N. Gregory Mankiw on the 'divine coincidence'.] ] Jordi Galí and Olivier Blanchard have called this property the 'divine coincidence', and have argued that more realistic models which include additional frictions (such as frictional unemployment) imply a tradeoff between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the output gap. [Blanchard, Olivier, and Jordi Galí (2007), 'Real wage rigidities and the New Keynesian model'. "Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking" 39 (supplement 1), pp. 35-65.]

Galí is perhaps best known for providing time series evidence that improvements in labour productivity cause employment to decrease. This finding contradicts the predictions of some well-known real business cycle models promoted by the New Classical macroeconomic school, but is (according to Galí) consistent with many New Keynesian models. [Galí, Jordi (1999), 'Technology, employment, and the business cycle: Do technology shocks explain aggregate fluctuations?' "American Economic Review" 89 (1), pp. 249-71.] However, the statistical methods ('structural vector autoregressions') on which this finding is based remain controversial. [Thomas F. Cooley and Mark Dwyer (1998), 'Business Cycle Analysis Without Much Theory: A Look at Structural VARs'. "Journal of Econometrics" 83, pp. 57-88.] [Jon Faust and Eric M. Leeper (1997), 'When Do Long-Run Identifying Restrictions Give Reliable Results?' "Journal of Business and Economic Statistics" 15 (3), pp. 345-53.] [V.V. Chari, Patrick J. Kehoe, and Ellen McGrattan (2007), [http://minneapolisfed.org/research/common/pub_detail.cfm?pb_autonum_id=1035 Are Structural VARs with Long-Run Restrictions Useful in Developing Business Cycle Theory?] Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Staff Report #364.]

See also

* [http://www.crei.cat/people/gali/ Web page of Jordi Galí at CREI]

Notes and References