Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory, Fall 2019
ECON 322 - 003 (8:30am-9:45am, T/R)
Syllabus and Course OutlineCourse materials are hosted on Blackboard
Course Links
Introduction
The Missing Men
Don’t Blame China For Taking U.S. Jobs
Why Men Don’t Want the Jobs Done Mostly by Women
Brexit: All you need to know about the UK leaving the EU
Top Economists Grapple With Public Disdain for Initiatives They Championed
Purely Evidence-based Policy Doesn't Exist
Chapter 2
Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)
Economic Data Calendar
Wall Street's Hottest Address? K Street
GDP to Get Bigger, Not Necessarily Faster
Planet Money, The Friday Podcast: The Price Of Lettuce In Brooklyn
The Billion Prices Project @ MIT
Data Docs - Unemployment and Employment Data video
GDP vs. GDI as a measure of the size of the economy
Sizing Up Black Markets and Red-Light Districts for G.D.P.
Are U.K. Economic Data Leaking?
Can big data revolutionise policymaking by governments?
The Big, Permanent Tax Increase Inside the Tax Cut Act
The data casualties of the federal government shutdown
Stiglitz: It's time to retire metrics like GDP. They don't measure everything that matters
Chapter 3
BEA GDP Release
Making Money Flow: The MONIAC Machine
The Financial Crisis at 10: Will We Ever Recover?
John Bogle, who founded Vanguard and revolutionized retirement savings, dies at 89
Twitter thread on article measuring labor shares by country
Chapter 8
CIA World Factbook
Measuring Economic Growth From Outer Space
Hans Rosling: New Insights on Poverty
The Secret History of the Dismal Science. Part I. Economics, Religion and Race in the 19th Century
A 10-minute overview of Hsieh, Hurst, Jones, and Klenow, "The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth" (Econometrica, 2019)
Great letter from Bob Solow to George Akerlof (two Nobel laureates)
Chapter 7
Unemployment Insurance Replacement Rates During the Pandemic
The U.S. Labor Market during the Beginning of the Pandemic Recession
How Low Can Unemployment Really Go? Economists Have No Idea
Planet Money Podcast: Germany's Painful Solution To High Unemployment
The New Economics of Jobs is Back News for Working Class Americans
The New Face of American Unemployment
America’s ‘jobs for the boys’ is just half the employment story
Economics of College Education (tangential to our study of the labor market, but relevant to you all)
Planet Money Episode 485: What's Your Major?
NY Fed Blog: The Value of a College Degree
NY Fed Blog: Staying in College Longer Than Four Years Costs More Than You Might Think
NY Fed Blog: College May Not Pay Off for Everyone
NY Fed Blog: Are the Job Prospects of Recent College Graduates Improving?
Only 150 of 3500 U.S. Colleges Are Worth the Investment: Former Secretary of Education
2013 College Education ROI Rankings
Beyond the College Rankings: A Value-Added Approach to Assessing Two- and Four-Year Schools
NBER Working Paper: Declining labor hours and the price of leisure
Minimum Wage Laws and Inequality
Chapter 4
All monies are commodity monies
Milton Friedman, "The Island of Stone Money"
NPR on "The Island of Stone Money"
Why Kyle Bass Acquired $1 Million Worth Of Nickels
The Case of the Missing Currency
Maybe it’s time America gets rid of most of its cash
India pulled 86% of its cash out of circulation. It’s not going well.
When the Fed Raises Rates, These Traders Make it Happen
What Happens When the Fed Raises Rates, In One Rube Goldberg Machine
How Interest Rates Are Set: The Fed's New Tools Explained
Reserve Requirements
‘Pop Your Collar’ Tribute to Outgoing Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen Storms Central Bank Social Media
Excellent Twitter thread on Janet Yellen's tenure as Fed chair
Jerome Powell Defends Policy of Gradually Raising Interest Rates
The Non-Weirdness of Negative Interest Rates
The Fed Using Interest on Reserves to Manage the Money Supply
Fed purchases with COVID vs great recession
Chapter 5
"Inflation is not magic." About inflation as a tool to combat nominal wage rigidities.
Be Ready To Mint That Coin
The Exaggerated Death of Inflation
The chained CPI: Another secret tax hike for the middle class slipped into the GOP tax bills
Trump wanted to print money to repay the national debt. That’s bananas
The Path To Hyperinflation: What Happened To Venezuela?
Robert Lucas on Monetary Policy and Economists as storytellers
Threats to Central Bank Independence: High-Frequency Identification with Twitter
American history as told through interest rates
Mankiw: A Skeptic's Guide to Modern Monetary Theory
Chapter 10
NBER Business Cycle Dates
The Recession and Recovery in Perspective
It’s the Aggregate Demand, Stupid
The covid-19 recession is the most unequal in modern U.S. history
Modern Infectious Diseases: Macroeconomic Impacts and Policy Responses
Chapter 11
Greece's Great Depression
Obama Gives Keynes His First Real-World Test
"Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem
Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two
NBER Working Paper: How did consumers use their stimulus payments?
The Economist: US consumers didn't use COVID payments as economists hoped
Research on the multiplier discussed in congress
The Brookings Institution's Hutchins Center on the fiscal response to COVID
Jason Furman on Multipliers and COVID Relief
Summers and Cutler on the Costs of COVID
Chapter 12
Fiscal Policy Using the Quantity Theory
IS-LM in the NY Times
A lot of bucks, but how much bang?
France Puts Pressure on Germany for Stimulus Plan
22 of 40 largest one day drops in S&P 500 occurred from 2008-2011
The Great Recession versus the Great Depression (Krugman)
The Great Recession: A Macroeconomic Earthquake (explains why IS-LM is useful)
Austerity and the rise of the Nazi party
Freakonomics: Ben Bernanke Gives Himself a Grade
How fiscal and monetary policy stopped depression in 2020
Chapter 6
Freakonomics Radio: A Free-Trade Democrat in the Trump White House
Trump faces failing strategy on auto jobs as he heads to Ohio
Trade Fight With China Enters Overtime, With Tariffs a Costly Sticking Point
As trade deficit explodes, Trump finds he can’t escape the laws of economics
Steel Profits Gain, but Steel Users Pay, under Trump’s Protectionism
Trade War with China Slashed U.S. Exports 26.3% as U.S. Imports Rose 38.5%
THE IMPACT OF THE 2018 TRADE WAR ON U.S. PRICES AND WELFARE
Volvo Rips Up Production Plans in Effort to Dodge Trade War Tariffs
Volvo Rips Up Production Plans in Effort to Dodge Trade War Tariffs
Stocks tumble again on report US plans more tariffs
Brexit Provides Early Proof of Deglobalization’s Costs
Trump's tariffs have already cost Ford $1B; now it's planning layoffs
John Oliver on Trade
Chart of the week: U.S. trade deficit widened in December to $53.1 billion, the largest gap since October 2008
Yes, protectionism can save some US jobs, but at what cost? Empirical evidence suggests it’s very, very expensive
NAFTA and other trade deals have not gutted American manufacturing — period
Donald Trump’s trade team has based their analysis on a remarkably silly mistake
Trump's Mental Deficit On Trade Deficits
Visualization of global trade
The Big Mac index
Chapter 13
Argentine peso tumbles to new low despite interest rate rise
Khan Academy: Speculative Attack on a Currency
How complex are international corporate structures?
Economic Performance Since the Introduction of the Euro
China cracks down on ‘financial ants’ smuggling cash to Hong Kong
EconTalk Podcast: The Future of Europe
Chapter 18
The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan
Macroeconomic model comparisons and forecast competitions
Can you say "rent-seeking?"
Corporate lobbying, political connections, and the bailout of banks
Joch Cochrane on Charles Plosser on discretionary monetary policy
House passes bill calling for rule-based monetary policy
Republicans consider ‘balanced-budget amendment’ after adding more than $1 trillion to the deficit
Recessions don't always have to mean big rises in unemployment
Fiscal Policy in Good Times and Bad
Washington Post: Heaven help us in the next financial crisis
Planet Money Episode 898: Happy Fed Independence Day
NY Times: Keep the Federal Reserve I Love Alive (by Greg Mankiw, your textbook author)
NY Magazine: The World's Best Bureaucrat (Jerome Powell)
Chapter 16
Episode 522: The Invention Of 'The Economy' (A story featuring Simon Kuznets)
Why Millennials Are Ditching Cars And Redefining Ownership
Press Release for Milton Friedman's Nobel Prize in Economics (1976)
Press Release for James Tobin's Nobel Prize in Economics (1981)
Press Release for Franco Modigliani's Nobel Prize in Economics (1985)
Mastrobuoni and Weinberg (2009) on intra-monthly consumption smoothing
Chapter 19
How Should We Think about the Debt?
This is how much you would have to contribute to pay off your country’s debt elections
What Size Fiscal Deficits for the United States?
Why Wall Street cares a lot about Argentina's elections
Federal Government Debt Clock
GAO Federal Debt Basics
Did the 2008 Tax Rebates Stimulate Spending?
What is Generational Accounting?
Ernie Tedeschi on the rise of debt from 2001-2027
WSJ Op-Ed A Debt Crisis is on the Horizon
WSJ: Why Are States So Strapped for Cash? There Are Two Big Reasons
Washington Post: The U.S. government is set to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year, an 84 percent jump from last year
NPR's Marketplace: Should you worry about the National Debt?
Foreign Affairs: Who's Afraid of Budget Deficits?
NBER Working paper: A History of Debt
NY Times: Spend More on Interest Than on the Military
Washington Post: ‘I support higher taxes’: The billionaire behind the National Debt Clock has had it with Trump
Visualization of Federal Spending
The Daily Beast: Trump on Coming Debt Crisis: ‘I Won’t Be Here’ When It Blows Up
Chapter 17
Frontline: The Retirement Gamble
A Random Walk Down Wall Street
Can the stock market save millennials?
5 Ominous Signs for the Securities Industry
Actively managed mutual funds fall short again — and investors notice
2013 Nobel Price in Economics awarded for research on asset pricing
Largest Tax Expenditures - see several for owner occupied homes
How complex are corporate structures?
WSJ: Corporate Tax Reform is the Key to Growth
Chapter 20
Larry Summers on Financial Crises
Hank Paulson and the response to the crisis
What do slow recoveries from financial crises mean about the most recent response to a crisis?
Government support of banks
This American Life, "The Giant Pool of Money"
More evidence ‘average is over’ and the US middle class is thinning
Fed Balance Sheet Risks
Complex Corporate Structures
The Stimulus Program Was a Smashing Success: It Erased Most Middle Class Income Losses in the Recession
Planet Money: The Last Bank Bailout
Fed Puts Together Plan to Unwind Securities Portfolio
Business Insider: Wall Street is 'forgetting the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis'