This is the eighth in a series of annuals from the National Bureau of Economic Research that are designed to stimulate research on problems in applied economics, to bring frontier theoretical developments to a wider audience, and to accelerate the interaction between analytical and empirical research in macroeconomics.Olivier Blanchard and Stanley Fischer are both Professors of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Contents: U.S. Commercial Banking. Trends, Cycles, and Policy, John Boyd and Mark Gertler. The Effects of Government Purchases: Theory and Evidence, Anton Braun and Ellen McGrattan. Macroeconomic Growth with Microeconomic Empirics, Ricardo Caballero and Adam Jaffe. The Chinese and East European Routes to Reform, Alan Gelb, Gary Jefferson, and Inderjit Singh. Waiting and the Option to Invest. Theory and Evidence, Robert Pindyck and Andres Solimano. Unemployment in Europe, Gilles Saint Paul.