|
In the late 1990s, the
United States achieved an economist's dream. Unemployment
was below four percent of the labor force for three years in
a row. Jobs were plentiful, and job markets were tight.
Growth was strong, the stock market was extremely high. And
yet there was no increase in the rate of inflation. Moreover
the federal budget went into surplus, with tax revenues
exceeding public expenditure for the first time in thirty
years.
Since that happy moment,
dark times have come again, with a recession in 2001,
accompanied by lost jobs and rising unemployment and
punctuated - though not caused - by terrorist attacks on New
York and Washington on September 11, 2001. There followed
two years of near-stagnation, with recovery resuming only in
mid-2003. But now, as we write in the fall of 2005, the U.S.
economy is again growing, and the unemployment rate is
stable near five percent. Still the economy has problems
that worry many. Budget deficits have returned. Trade
deficits are exceptionally high. Interest rates are rising.
The dollar has been sliding against the new mega-currency
across the Atlantic, the euro.
Meanwhile in Europe, a
debate rages over the future of the great project of
European Union. Europe is racked by high rates of
joblessness, especially among the young. Many European
leaders - fortified by the advice of many economists - are
determined to make their labor markets more "flexible," to
better follow what they believe to be the "American model."
In most cases, this means adjusting wages so that workers
with low skills receive less pay and enjoy fewer social
protections.
In this way, Europe's
leaders claim to hope to make such workers more attractive
to hire, and so reduce unemployment. But European
electorates are unhappy and distrustful. The French and the
Dutch have even voted to reject the European Constitution,
largely from fear that the new Europe would weaken the role
of national governments in the social sphere. Globalization,
privatization, deregulation and competition are turbulent
and troublesome forces, and it is perhaps not surprising
that many would prefer to keep them at bay. But beyond this,
it appears that many ordinary Europeans simply do not
believe that the solution to unemployment lies in cutting
wages. None of this is new. Ever since the 1930s, the
question of whether and how the government should take an
active role to fight unemployment, to promote economic
expansion, and to protect the living standards of working
people has been hotly debated. The lines of argument are
broadly the same now, though with variations and
innovations, as they were then. The divisions and
disagreements are broadly the same. It is mainly the
circumstances, the facts, and the personalities that have
changed.
Employment, growth,
inflation, interest rates, deficits, exchange rates and
globalization are the substance of modern macroeconomics.
You have no doubt encountered all of these words before. But
what do they mean? How do they interact? What are the chains
of cause and effect between policy instruments, like the
interest rate, and policy outcomes, such as unemployment? If
you are new to this subject, very likely you have no clear
idea. That is about to change when you study this
book.
Contents
PART
1 THE MACROECONOMIC REVOLUTION 1 REVOLUTION AND
COUNTERREVOLUTION 2 EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT
3 INTEREST, MONEY AND UNCERTAINTY
PART
2 THE KEYNESIAN THEORY 4 CLASSICAL AND KEYNESIAN
MACROECONOMIC MODELS 5 THE IS-LM MODEL AND THE
PHILLIPS CURVE
PART
3 MONETARISM AND NEW CLASSICAL ECONOMICS 6 AN
INTRODUCTION TO MONEY 7 MONETARISM 8 RATIONAL
EXPECTATIONS 9 THE AS-AD MODEL AND NEW CLASSICAL
ECONOMICS
PART
4 CONTEMPORARY DEPARTURES 10 NEW KEYNESIAN
MACROECONOMICS 11 THE MACROECONOMICS OF OPEN
ECONOMIES 12 THE POST-KEYNESIAN VISION 13 THE
Z-D MODEL AND THE BUSINESS CYCLE
INDEX
|
PDF files:
Preliminaries
(616 Kb)
Ch. 1 Revolution
and Counterrevolution
(744 Kb)
Ch. 7 Monetarism
(112 Kb)
|
A
collection of digital pictures and/or an electronic
version of the book can be made available for
lecturers who adopt this book. Please send a
request by e-mail to hlf@vssd.nl
|
About the
authors
James K. Galbraith
holds an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard University and a
Ph.D. in Economics from Yale. He has served as Executive
Director of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S.
Congress, and is presently Professor at the Lyndon B.
Johnson School of Public Affairs and in the Department of
Government at The University of Texas at Austin, where he
won a Texas Excellence in Teaching Award in 1990. He is the
the author of Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the
American Future (Basic Books, 1989), and co-author with
Robert Heilbroner of The Economic Problem (3th edition,
Prentice-Hall, 1990), a principles text. He lives in Austin
with his wife Ying Tang, son Douglas, and daughter Margaret,
who happens to share her birthday with John Maynard Keynes
and Adam Smith.
William Darity,
Jr., is the Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Eeonomies at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has
taught since 1983. He formerly has held faculty positions at
the University of Texas at Austin as an assistant and
associate professor, at the University of Maryland at
College Park, and the University of Tulsa as a visitor. He
is the author of over 90 published articles and reviews in
numerous professional journals including the American
Economic Review, the Southern Economic Journal, the Journal
of Economic History, the Review of Black Political Economy,
the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, the History of
Political Economy, and the Journal of Macroeconomics. His
book publications also include The Loan Pushers: The Role of
Commercial Banks in the International Debt Crisis (1988,
coauthored with Bobbie Horn) and the edited volume Labor
Economics: Problems in Analyzing Labor Markets (1993).
Professor Darity lives with his family in Durham, North
Carolina, where he plays blues harmonica in local jam
sessions, and coaches youth soccer and basketball. Jamie
Galbraith and William (Sandy) Darity met as Marshall
Scholars in England in the fall of 1974, and have been fast
friends ever since.
|