A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics: What Managers, Executives, and Students Need to Know

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Harvard Business Press, 2014 - Business & Economics - 211 pages
Understanding the Ground Rules for the Global Economy

In this revised and updated edition of A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics, David A. Moss draws on his years of teaching at Harvard Business School to explain important macro concepts using clear and engaging language.

This guidebook covers the essentials of macroeconomics and examines, in a simple and intuitive way, the core ideas of output, money, and expectations. Early chapters leave you with an understanding of everything from fiscal policy and central banking to business cycles and international trade. Later chapters provide a brief monetary history of the United States as well as the basics of macroeconomic accounting. You'll learn why countries trade, why exchange rates move, and what makes an economy grow.

Moss's detailed examples will arm you with a clear picture of how the economy works and how key variables impact business and will equip you to anticipate and respond to major macroeconomic events, such as a sudden depreciation of the real exchange rate or a steep hike in the federal funds rate.

Read this book from start to finish for a complete overview of macroeconomics, or use it as a reference when you're confronted with specific challenges, like the need to make sense of monetary policy or to read a balance of payments statement. Either way, you'll come away with a broad understanding of the subject and its key pieces, and you'll be empowered to make smarter business decisions.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
Understanding the Macro Economy
5
Output
7
Money
33
Expectations
67
Selected Topics
87
A Short History of Money and Monetary Policy in the United States
89
The Fundamentals of GDP Accounting
101
Understanding Exchange Rates
131
Putting the Pieces Together
139
Epilogue
149
Glossary
159
Notes
183
Index
191
About the Author
211
Copyright

Reading a Balance of Payments Statement
117

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About the author (2014)

David A. Moss is the John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is the author of Socializing Security: Progressive-Era Economists and the Origins of American Social Policy and When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager, and is the founder of the Tobin Project, a nonprofit research organization.