How To Think And Reason In Macroeconomics

This text teaches how to think and reason about macroeconomic events and policy. It seeks to combine economic theory with a feel for South African economic processes, institutions and data.

Geared to upper-level college students or MBA candidates, this economics textbook uses examples from Africa to explain why the rate of economic growth is higher in some countries than in others, why the inflation rate varies from year to year, why unemployment rates rise and fall, why the Zimbabwean dollar is weak compared to strong currencies such as Botswana’s, and why imports of goods and services sometimes increase quite suddenly. The book also provides comments on the role of government and highlights ways to improve macroeconomic policies in developing countries.

Macroeconomic policy is one of the most important policy domains, and the tools of macroeconomics are among the most valuable for policy makers. Yet there has been, up to now, a wide gulf between the level at which macroeconomics is taught at the undergraduate level and the level at which it is practiced. At the same time, doctoral-level textbooks are usually not targeted at a policy audience, making advanced macroeconomics less accessible to current and aspiring practitioners. This book, born out of the Masters course the authors taught for many years at the Harvard Kennedy School, fills this gap. It introduces the tools of dynamic optimization in the context of economic growth, and then applies them to a wide range of policy questions – ranging from pensions, consumption, investment and finance, to the most recent developments in fiscal and monetary policy. It does so with the requisite rigor, but also with a light touch, and an unyielding focus on their application to policy-making, as befits the authors’ own practical experience. Advanced Macroeconomics: An Easy Guide is bound to become a great resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and practitioners alike.

It is possible to beirrational without beinguneconomic ? What is the link betweenValue andvalues ? What do economists do when theyexplain ? We live in times when the economic logic has become unquestionable and all-powerful so that our quotidian economic experiences are defined by their scientific construal. This book is the result of a

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, written by legendary author John Maynard Keynes is widely considered to be one of the top 100 greatest books of all time. This masterpiece was published right after the Great Depression. It sought to bring about a revolution, commonly referred to as the ‘Keynesian Revolution’, in the way economists thought—especially challenging the proposition that a market economy tends naturally to restore itself to full employment on its own. Regarded widely as the cornerstone of Keynesian thought, this book challenged the established classical economics and introduced new concepts. ‘The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money’ transformed economics and changed the face of modern macroeconomics. Keynes’ argument is based on the idea that the level of employment is not determined by the price of labour, but by the spending of money. It gave way to an entirely new approach where employment, inflation and the market economy are concerned.

Provides a lucid and novel introduction to macroeconomic issues and introduces an alternative approach of understanding macroeconomics, which is inspired by the works of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and Piero Sraffa. It also presents the reader with a critical account of mainstream marginalist macroeconomics.

Are all film stars linked to Kevin Bacon? Why do the stock markets rise and fall sharply on the strength of a vague rumour? How does gossip spread so quickly? Are we all related through six degrees of separation? There is a growing awareness of the complex networks that pervade modern society. We see them in the rapid growth of the Internet, the ease of global communication, the swift spread of news and information, and in the way epidemics and financial crises develop with startling speed and intensity. This introductory book on the new science of networks takes an interdisciplinary approach, using economics, sociology, computing, information science and applied mathematics to address fundamental questions about the links that connect us, and the ways that our decisions can have consequences for others.