Lawrence Summers Deserves a Nobel Prize for Reviving the Theory of Secular Stagnation

Lawrence Summers produced a big upset within the economics profession when he revived Alvin Hansen’s theory of secular stagnation, which had been thought of as an old-Keynesian fallacy. While some economists like Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman instantly recognized Summers’s contribution, a large share of the economics profession remained skeptical at first. Whereas most New Keynesian models allow for macroeconomic shocks to have only transitory...