Macroeconomics [antikvár]

Preface This Third Edition continues the philosophy of the two earlier ones of presenting modern macroeconomics at a level appropriate to the intermediate course. The many revisions were made largely to track important developments in the mainstream of macroeconomics. More than ever, macroeconomic research focuses on the fundamental determinants of output, employment, prices, and interest rates. These determinants are the economy's technology, its blueprints for production—its labor force, its capital stock, and its monetary policy. We stress the point that these forces set the basic levels of the key macro variables. As the Third Edition goes to press, the U.S. economy is in recession. Explanations of recessions continue to be an important theme of this book. Chapter 1 describes the longer-run path of the economy and introduces the idea that recessions are temporary departures from that path. After the determinants of long-run growth are more fully developed in Chapters 4 and 5, we return to the topic of recessions and pose the question—central to current macroeconomic research—of why economic incentives do not restore full employment almost immediately after a shock sends the economy into recession. Macroeconomists in the last few years have looked seriously at the idea that some of the ups and downs of the economy are the results of variations in the pace of technological change. The real business cycle model, prominent in current research, considers technology shocks to be a prime