What is a recession? What happened to the U.S. economy in 2020 and 2021, and how did the pandemic, tax and spending policies, and monetary policies affect it? What happened in 2008–2009, during the “Global Financial Crisis”? Why is inflation higher today than at any time in the last three decades? Why does the unemployment rate vary over time? Why is there unemployment at all? Why do exchange rates between currencies fluctuate? How do policies in one country affect other countries? Why do economies grow at different rates? Why has China’s growth rate exceeded that of the U.S. for more than 30 years, and will such disparities continue? What explains movements in the stock market? These are some of the core questions of macroeconomics. If you are curious about the answers, then this is the course for you.
The course is organized around four major themes: the determinants of short-run economic fluctuations; the determinants of long-run growth; the investigation of government policies, including monetary policy, government spending, and exchange rate policy; and the analysis of key economic sectors, such as consumer spending, business investment, and financial markets.
Overview
Syllabus
- Lecture 1: Introduction to 14.02 Principles of Macroeconomics
- Lecture 2: Basic Macroeconomic Concepts
- Lecture 3: The Goods Market
- Lecture 4: The Financial Market
- Lecture 5: IS-LM Model
- Lecture 6: IS-LM, continued
- Lecture 7: An Extended IS-LM Model
- Lecture 8: The Labor Market
- Lecture 9: The Phillips Curve and Inflation
- Lecture 10: Quiz 1 Review
- Lecture 11: The IS-LM-PC Model
- Lecture 12: IS-LM-PC Model continued
- Lecture 13: The Facts of Growth
- Lecture 14: Saving, Capital Accumulation, and Output
- Lecture 15: Technological Progress and Growth
- Lecture 16: Convergence and Cross-Country Variation
- Lecture 17: Introduction to Open Economy
- Lecture 18: Quiz 2 Review
- Lecture 19: The Goods Market in the Open Economy
- Lecture 20: The Mundell-Fleming Model
- Lecture 21: Exchange Rate Regimes
- Lecture 22: Financial Markets and Expectations
- Lecture 23: Asset Pricing
- Lecture 24: IS-LM and Expectations
- Lecture 25: Quiz 3 Review
Taught by
Prof. Ricardo Caballero