Macroeconomics: The Big Picture

Part One: The Toolbox

1. Introduction

2. Economics is a Social Science: We Use Models to Analyze Real Life

3. How Markets Work: Supply and Demand and Equilibrium

4. Diving Deeper into the Curves: Elasticity and Welfare Analysis and What they Offer

5. Roles of the Government in the Economy: Price Controls

6. Roles of the Government in the Economy: Market Failures (Public Goods and Externalities) and the Criminal Justice System

7. Roles of the Government in the Economy: Taxation and Reducing Inequality

Part Two: Building Blocks of Macroeconomics

8. GDP: What It Is…and What It Isn’t

9. Evaluating GDP: Does it Measure What We Want It To?

10. Measuring the Price Level: The Consumer Price Index

11. Employment, Unemployment, and How They Are Measured

12. The Future of Work

13. Production and Growth

Part Three: Money Enters the Picture

14. Tools of Finance: Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, Insurance

15. Investment: The Market for Loanable Funds and Alternative Systems

16. Money: What It Is and How It Works

17. The Federal Reserve

18. Monetary Policy and Inflation

19. The Future of Money

Part Four: The Aggregate Model and the World Economy

20. The Aggregate Model: Aggregate Demand, Long-Run Aggregate Supply, and Short-Run Aggregate Supply

21. The Aggregate Model: Equilibrium and Automatic Stabilizers

22. The Aggregate Model: Discretionary (Monetary and Fiscal) Policy

23. The World Economy: International Trade in Theory and Reality

24. The World Economy: Globalization and Its Problems

25. The World Economy: The Challenges of Development