Macroeconomic Essentials, fourth edition: Understanding Economics in the News (Mit Press) - Softcover

Kennedy, Peter E.; Prag, Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262533340 ISBN 13: 9780262533348

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2017

Synopsis

The new edition of a concise and nontechnical but rigorous introductory text that emphasizes fundamental concepts and real-world applications, thoroughly revised and updated.

This introductory text offers an alternative to the encyclopedic, technically oriented approach taken by traditional textbooks on macroeconomic principles. Concise and nontechnical but rigorous, its goal is not to teach students to shift curves on diagrams but to help them understand fundamental macroeconomic concepts and their real-world applications. It accomplishes this by providing a clear exposition of introductory macroeconomic theory along with more than 700 one- or two-sentence “news clips,” based on economics media coverage, as illustrations or student exercises. Although the writing is accessible, end-of-chapter questions are challenging, requiring a thorough understanding of related macroeconomic concepts, critical-thinking skills, and an ability to make connections to the real world.

This fourth edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, with new material on such topics as aggregate supply and demand, supply-side models, recent issues faced by the Federal Reserve, the role of government, and “burst bubbles.” The more challenging end-of-chapter questions are separated out, and news clip questions have been added that refer to recent events. Optional chapter appendixes offer technical material; other appendixes provide answers to sample exam questions and to even-numbered end-of-chapter questions. Text boxes (“curiosities”) offer short expositions of related topics. The book can be used as a text for principles of macroeconomics and applied macroeconomics courses, as a supplementary text for a traditional macro-principles course, or for MBA macroeconomics courses.

About this title

About the Author:

The late Peter E. Kennedy was Professor Emeritus of Economics at Simon Fraser University.

Review:

By setting aside much of the formal apparatus of 'curve-shifting' economics, Macroeconomic Essentials focuses attention just where it should be: on understanding key concepts and on thinking. At the center of real world economics is, after all, the study of human behavior, not the art of mathematical manipulation.

―Lloyd J. Dumas, Professor of Economics, University of Texas at Dallas; author of The Peacekeeping Economy

About this edition

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0262533340
• ISBN 13: 9780262533348
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 472