This course is aimed at senior undergraduates and postgraduate students to introduce the modern methods and frameworks commonly used in contemporary macroeconomic research, build macroeconomic models with microeconomic foundation, and investigate economic fluctuations, economic growth, and other major macroeconomics topics. This course aims to teach intermediate macroeconomics consistent with current macroeconomic research and lay the foundation for further study of advanced macroeconomics.
Since the 1980s, the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model has been developed as the main framework for analyzing economic fluctuations. Subsequently, New Keynesian economics developed rapidly, providing new macroeconomic policy analysis and evaluation methods. DSGE model has a profound influence on the research methods of macroeconomics. However, many intermediate-level macroeconomics teachings do not reflect the new progress of macroeconomics and its research methods. This course is not intended to introduce more detailed content or more existing viewpoints based on elementary macroeconomics but rather to consolidate and improve the knowledge of macroeconomics and microeconomics acquired by the learner. It enables learners to complete the transformation of knowledge structure and a theoretical framework from introductory macroeconomics to advanced macroeconomics and lays a foundation for later learning advanced macroeconomics, monetary economics, monetary policy, international macroeconomics, finance, and other relevant courses.
Regarding textbook selection, there are many widely used textbooks in the existing intermediate-level macroeconomics courses, but most are supplementary to the primary macroeconomics knowledge in terms of content, which are different from the actual research framework. This course is based on Stephen Williamson’s “Macroeconomics” and incorporates relevant teaching materials. The lectures and course materials also introduce the contents borrowed from other excellent teaching materials or academic literature. In particular, the course provides materials and explanations for some of the complicated and vital issues. It aims to consolidate students’ knowledge of macroeconomics, transform knowledge structure and theoretical framework, and lay the foundation for future study and research. In practice, it enables learners to apply the theories and methods they have learned to analyze essential problems in macroeconomics.
This course is organized as follows. Part 1 includes an introduction and measurement issues. Part 2 describes building a static macroeconomic model with a microeconomic foundation. Part 3 begins to explore the dynamic process of economic growth. Part 4 develops an intertemporal model to study consumption-savings decisions and the effects of government deficits on the economy. In Part 5, money is introduced into the real intertemporal model to construct the intertemporal monetary model. Part 6 involves international macroeconomics. Part 7 examines some important topics in macroeconomics.
