Fall 2023
UMSL Economics 1002: Principles of Macroeconomics
using as the textbook: Principles of Macroeconomics: An Evolutionary Approach, by M. Gillman, Kendall Hunt Publishing.
Description:
High Inflation Times! Macroeconomics and monetary policy and their fundamentals has rarely been so important for learning first principles. We will do that and you will learn analysis about business cycles, growth, and monetary policy. We will use data at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s Federal Reserve Economic Data system (FRED), which is known worldwide as the leading source (just type FRED into Google).
Providing the historical development of Macroeconomics into Neoclassical and Keynesian Schools during the Great Depression, the course uses the historical evolution of the science plus microeconomic concepts of supply and demand to analyze economic business cycles, economic growth, and economic crises. Government policy is viewed in terms of optimal social insurance. An approach of the course and textbook is to view macroeconomic crises and how they shape the theoretic foundations of modern macroeconomics. With this approach, the book goes from the Great Depression of the 1930s to the Great Recession of 2008-2009, and now with consideration of the Covid-19 global pandemic.
UMSL Economics 4200/5200: Monetary Theory and Policy,
using as the textbook: The Spectre of Price Inflation, by M. Gillman, Columbia University Press, 2023.
Description: A key part of the history of monetary policy is that central banks were originally designed to issue currency and to insure financial stability. The latter is now called macroprudential policy. More generally and without the jargon we can call this private financial system insurance policy. Once we put central bank policy in terms of both money supply policy and bank insurance policy we see the dual roles that central banks try to fill. They always supply money and traditionally always affect interest rates in how it money is supplied. More recently, central banks more directly set interest rates unrelated to the money supply and have broken this traditional link. This has led to interest rates perhaps forced away from their natural equilibrium levels that depend on the central bank supply of money. We will explore this brave new world of monetary policy that has existed since the 2008 banking crisis. We will try to understand distortions to both monetary policy and banking policy that exist and how they may affect the economy. And we will bring forth the theory that is used to justify various policy positions in this central bank realm.
Other UMSL Courses I teach:
Economics 2200/3030: Monetary Policy in Historical Perspective
Economics 5002: Advanced Macroeconomics
Take UMSL Macroeconomics.
Find out about our world:
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Will the tax cuts keep the economy expanding and stock market values high?
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Will unemployment keep falling?
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Will the Federal Reserve Bank keep raising Interest Rates?
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What will happen to Inflation?
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How do international trade disputes affect the US economy.
Let’s ask some questions and get some answers together.
Take Principles of Macroeconomics 1002 and open your future to the breadth of Economics.
Take Masters level Advanced Macroeconomics 5002 and ensure your job choices are broad ranging..
I. Principles of Macroeconomics, Economics 1002.
NEW: TEXTBOOK NOW AVAILABLE AS E-BOOK for only $60 from Kendall Hunt Publishers:
Principles of Macroeconomics: An Evolutionary Approach, Max Gillman, 2017, Kendall Hunt Publishing.
available at UMSL Bookstore, online.
UMSL Students:
Get to the Edge: of Macro at the Principles Level.
The debate starts in the Great Depression and has re-ignited since the 2008-2009 Great Recession. We use cutting edge Microfoundations of Macroeconomics to frame the debate. This means we actually use aggregate supply and demand analysis as consistent with the work of John Maynard Keynes’s most famous student, Frank Ramsey. Personalities color the landscape of foundation “principles” of macro. Why? Because the principles clash between two opposing schools of thought: the Keynesian and the Neoclassical. Learn about the how the debate started in the 1930’s with the famous American economist Irving Fisher against the famous British economist John Maynard Keynes. These give us to approaches to Macroeconomic theory and policy, to learn, consider, and apply to policy issues so as to get a full perspective of how the macre-economy works. The neoclassical might be said to be in favor of “less” government intervention, but actually they promote “more efficient” Social Insurance programs, such as efficient banking reform after the Great Recession of 2007-2008. Keynesians have been characterized as promoting income redistribution more than efficient social insurance systems.
We cover aggregate supply and demand analysis that can be used to show business cycles (expansions and recessions) and the long term growth of the economy (“Solow” growth). We also do student engagement to give you the opportunity to develop and express your thoughts about these policies and applications to explain broad Macroeconomic changes in the economy. And we combine this with a FREE EconLowdown online course, with one module each week.
Max Gillman 