Publisher's Synopsis
Macroeconomics-A Practical Foundation, Essential Knowledge for Everyone: - Gives you the skills to think and speak perceptively on some of the most important issues of our time - Is easy to read, with everything presented step-by-step - Presents key macroeconomic ideas with intellectual rigor - Is very practical, addressing macroeconomic issues that affect you every day - Quickly takes you to concerns at the frontier of macroeconomics - Is motivational, written in a style in which the author encourages you to learn - Provides an excellent foundation for learning to use economic news to trade the financial markets - Gives a sound foundation for the ideas underlying graduate level macroeconomics Macroeconomics-A Practical Foundation covers some of the most topical issues of our time: - How to develop a model for intelligently appraising any economy - How to get a country out of a recession - Should a government have a balanced budget? - What is a sound framework for analyzing the implications of high government debt? - Why some countries choose fixed exchange rates while others choose flexible exchange rates - How a fixed exchange rate system works - Factors that affect daily movements in flexible exchange rates - Why does the US dollar strengthen sometimes, but weaken at other times, when there is good economic news in the US? - When is a currency overvalued/undervalued? - Real exchange rates and how do they let us assess a country's competitiveness - How does a central bank take account of economic growth and inflation in setting interest rates? - The key functions of a central bank, and how policies like quantitative easing, Operation Twist and paying interest on reserves are supposed to work - When can higher economic growth occur without increasing inflation? - When do inflation and unemployment become troubling phenomena? - How inflation can become hyperinflation - The appropriate schema for presenting a country's economic transactions with the rest of the world in the balance of payments accounts - Is a trade/current account deficit necessarily bad? When might a country's huge trade surplus be a sign of detrimental economic trends in that country? - What is an appropriate methodology for analyzing the impact of economic, political and psychological factors on a country's macroeconomy? - The key differences/similarities between Keynesians, monetarists, new Keynesians, new classical economists, real business cycle theorists, supply-side economists... - How to distinguish a model from a mass of details, be sensitive to its assumptions and use it appropriately - What are economic growth rates expressed year-on-year versus quarter-on-quarter at an annual rate? What implications does this have for comparing growth rates of countries like the US and China? - Easy to understand explanations of chained dollars, the classical dichotomy and money neutrality, the cold-turkey versus the gradualist approach to fighting inflation, the equation of exchange, intervention and sterilized intervention, the Lucas critique, the Lucas supply curve, the Phelps-Friedman hypothesis, the Taylor rule, the fed funds rate, prime rate, discount rate, the Fisher relation, liquidity trap, purchasing power parity theory, Ricardian equivalence, seasonal adjustment, structural and cyclical budget deficits...
