Macroeconomic Essentials, fourth edition: Understanding Economics in the News

by Peter E. Kennedy, Jay Prag

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262339438
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	08/11/2017
Series:	The MIT Press
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	472
Sales rank:	994,462
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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

Jay Prag is Clinical Full Professor at Claremont Graduate University's Drucker School of Management. He is the coauthor (with Peter E. Kennedy) of Macroeconomic Essentials, fourth edition (MIT Press).

What People are Saying About This

Stephen Nelson

In the third edition of Macroeconomics Essentials, Peter Kennedy sets himself a difficult task and succeeds beautifully. Kennedy's textbook marries impressive breadth, simplicity, and rigor. He provides a concise and non-technical overview of the core analytical concepts in macroeconomics who are tethered to bits of relevant empirical evidence. This is a particularly useful textbook for instructors outside of economics departments that want to bring students quickly up to speed on the principles that underlie recent political economic trends and events (including the subprime crisis).

William A. Barnett

There is a fundamental reason that macroeconomics exists as a field distinguishable from aggregated microeconomics: the need for governments to make decisions that can only be guided by macroeconomics. This principles text emphasizes the policy issues that drive the development of the field. Peter Kennedy brings macroeconomics to life for undergraduate students.

I-Ming Chiu

How can we help students better understand how the economy operates? Among many macroeconomics textbooks on the market, Kennedy's Macroeconomic Essentials stands out as one of the best for effective macroeconomics learning. Well-structured text accompanied by numerous vivid examples from the media, the third edition again successfully links the complex macroeconomic concepts to daily observations.

Lloyd J. Dumas

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.

Endorsement

There is a fundamental reason that macroeconomics exists as a field distinguishable from aggregated microeconomics: the need for governments to make decisions that can only be guided by macroeconomics. This principles text emphasizes the policy issues that drive the development of the field. Peter Kennedy brings macroeconomics to life for undergraduate students.

—William A. Barnett, Editor, Macroeconomic Dynamics

From the Publisher

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