Macroeconomics 2 (Tutorial)
Bachelor, Goethe University Frankfurt, 2018
The course provides an introduction to advanced macroeconomics at the undergraduate level, serving as a bridge between intermediate-level macroeconomics and graduate-level macroeconomics. It is intended for undergraduates who have successfully completed BMAK and BMIK and who are now ready to study advanced topics in macroeconomics in greater analytical detail. The course objective is to deepen our understanding of fundamental macroeconomic problems and appropriate policies. After completing this course, students should be able to understand newspaper articles on stabilization and growth policies. Highly successful students will be able to explain these articles to non-economists. Top students will be able to spot mistakes and to debate opinions expressed in the press. Although the emphasis is on presenting the intuition behind macro theory, we will be using a combination of figures and mathematics to derive results, with more emphasis on mathematics than in intermediate-level macroeconomics. Knowledge of functions, derivatives, and constrained optimization, along with basic statistics is assumed.
Instructors: Prof. Dr. A. Meyer-Gohde (exception: Prof. Dr. M. Trabandt in Fall 2021) Dates: Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Textbook Introducing Advanced Macroeconomics: Growth and Business Cycles 3rd Edition, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 2023 By Peter Birch Sørensen and Hans Jørgen Whitta-Jacobsen
Course Outline Part I: Economic Growth
- Some facts about prosperity and growth (ch. 2)
- Capital accumulation and growth: The basic Solow model (ch. 3)
- Technological progress and growth: The general Solow model (ch. 5)
- Growth accounting
- R&D-based models of endogenous growth (ch. 9) Part II: Business Cycles
- Some facts about business cycles (ch. 13)
- Consumption (ch. 16)
- Investment (ch. 15)
- Monetary policy and aggregate demand (ch. 17)
- Inflation, unemployment and aggregate supply (ch. 18)
- Explaining business cycles (ch. 19)