We've just been through the worst recession since the Great Depression, so one thought is that these are rare events and and don't need a lot of attention in core classes.  But Mark Thoma argues that depression economics needs to become a standard part of macro courses:

Since large contractions of the type we’ve recently experienced are relatively rare, it’s easy to understand why research and teaching about this topic wanes over time. There are generally pressing contemporary issues that crowd out older questions.

But not fully understanding how these events occur, and not knowing what the best response is when they do happen, makes it difficult for us to prevent large downturns in the first place, and to respond to them effectively when they happen anyway despite our attempts to prevent them.

We need to have research and teaching about depression economics continue even as the recent downturn fades from our memory. This type of classroom instruction from Brad DeLong and others is a start, and there have been many academic papers recently trying to understand how economies work when they are far from full employment, interest rates are at zero, etc. The question is whether people like Brad will continue to teach this topic ten years from now — will we begin to see separate chapter in the textbooks on “depression economics”?  — and whether research into these questions will continue to find a place in the best journals.

Read Thoma's full CBS Money Watch column here.