Intermediate Macroeconomics

The goal of this class is to integrate time, expectations, and capital into macroeconomics. You’ll learn how individuals learn, update, and form expectations, how this enables them to make plans for both production and consumption, and how this leads to macroeconomic phenomena like interest rates, bubbles, and financial crashes. We’ll also touch on a number of great debates in macroeconomics, and show how the field has progressed to answer tough questions over the last century.

The class covers the following units:

1. Recap from Principles
2. The Fisher Intertemporal Model
3. Consumption and Income
4. Capital Theory
5. Rational Expectations and the Lucas Critique
6. Aggregate Supply/Aggregate Demand
7. Time Inconsistency and Monetary Policy
8. Public Finance
9. National income and the Current Account
10. Bubbles and Financial Markets