Catalog

Principles of Macroeconomics

Economics MIT CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 25 lectures

What is a recession? What happened to the U.S. economy in 2020 and 2021, and how did the pandemic, tax and spending policies, and monetary policies affect it? What happened in 2008–2009, during the “Global Financial Crisis”? Why is inflation higher today than at any time in the last three decades? Why does the unemployment rate vary over time? Why is there unemployment at all? Why do exchange rates between currencies fluctuate? How do policies in one country affect other countries? Why do economies grow at different rates? Why has China’s growth rate exceeded that of the U.S. for more than 30 years, and will such disparities continue? What explains movements in the stock market? These are some of the core questions of macroeconomics. If you are curious about the answers, then this is the course for you. The course is organized around four major themes: the determinants of short-run economic fluctuations; the determinants of long-run growth; the investigation of government policies, including monetary policy, government spending, and exchange rate policy; and the analysis of key economic sectors, such as consumer spending, business investment, and financial markets.

Syllabus

  1. 1 Lecture 1: Introduction to 14.02 Principles of Macroeconomics
  2. 2 Lecture 2: Basic Macroeconomic Concepts
  3. 3 Lecture 3: The Goods Market
  4. 4 Lecture 4: The Financial Market
  5. 5 Lecture 5: IS-LM Model
  6. 6 Lecture 6: IS-LM, continued
  7. 7 Lecture 7: An Extended IS-LM Model
  8. 8 Lecture 8: The Labor Market
  9. 9 Lecture 9: The Phillips Curve and Inflation
  10. 10 Lecture 10: Quiz 1 Review
  11. 11 Lecture 11: The IS-LM-PC Model
  12. 12 Lecture 12: IS-LM-PC Model continued
  13. 13 Lecture 13: The Facts of Growth
  14. 14 Lecture 14: Saving, Capital Accumulation, and Output
  15. 15 Lecture 15: Technological Progress and Growth
  16. 16 Lecture 16: Convergence and Cross-Country Variation
  17. 17 Lecture 17: Introduction to Open Economy
  18. 18 Lecture 18: Quiz 2 Review
  19. 19 Lecture 19: The Goods Market in the Open Economy
  20. 20 Lecture 20: The Mundell-Fleming Model
  21. 21 Lecture 21: Exchange Rate Regimes
  22. 22 Lecture 22: Financial Markets and Expectations
  23. 23 Lecture 23: Asset Pricing
  24. 24 Lecture 24: IS-LM and Expectations
  25. 25 Lecture 25: Quiz 3 Review

Course materials