The Friedman-Lucas Transition in Macroeconomics: A Structuralist Approach - Softcover

Galbács, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0128165650 ISBN 13: 9780128165652

Publisher: Academic Press, 2020

Synopsis

The Friedman-Lucas Transition in Macroeconomics: A Structuralist Approach considers how and to what extent monetarist and new classical theories of the business-cycle can be regarded as approximately true descriptions of a cycle’s causal structure or whether they can be no more than useful predictive instruments. This book will be of interest to upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers and professionals concerned with practical, theoretical and historical aspects of macroeconomics and business-cycle modeling.

• Offers a wide selection of Robert Lucas’s unpublished works
• Discusses the history of business-cycle theories in the context of methodological advancements
• Suggests effective arguments for emphasizing the key role of representative agents and their assumed properties in macro-modeling

About this title

About the Author

Peter Galbács is professor of economics at the Institute of Economics and Methodology, Budapest Business School. His principal research interests cover the history and the methodology of modern business-cycle theories with a special emphasis on new classical macroeconomics and Robert E. Lucas’s oeuvre. Recently he has published a monograph on the theory of new classical macroeconomics in which he made efforts to find the adequate scope of highly formalized and isolative new classical macro-models in practical-operative economic policy contexts.

From the Back Cover

The Friedman-Lucas Transition in Macroeconomics analyses whether modern theories of the business cycle can provide approximately true descriptions of a cycle’s causal structure, or whether they are useful instruments only capable of generating predictions with considerable empirical accuracy. This conflict underlies the debate between economic realism and instrumentalism. Realists make efforts to argue for the truth of models, while for instrumentalists models are only constructs for predictive purposes. The Friedman-Lucas Transition in Macroeconomics serves as the first step to a deeper understanding of the rivalry between theoretical approaches of the business cycle.

Edition details

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0128165650
• ISBN 13: 9780128165652
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 396