The substantially revised fourth edition of a widely used text, offering both an introduction to recursive methods and advanced material, mixing tools and sample applications.
Recursive methods provide powerful ways to pose and solve problems in dynamic macroeconomics. Recursive Macroeconomic Theory offers both an introduction to recursive methods and more advanced material. Only practice in solving diverse problems fully conveys the advantages of the recursive approach, so the book provides many applications. This fourth edition features two new chapters and substantial revisions to other chapters that demonstrate the power of recursive methods.
One new chapter applies the recursive approach to Ramsey taxation and sharply characterizes the time inconsistency of optimal policies. These insights are used in other chapters to simplify recursive formulations of Ramsey plans and credible government policies. The second new chapter explores the mechanics of matching models and identifies a common channel through which productivity shocks are magnified across a variety of matching models. Other chapters have been extended and refined. For example, there is new material on heterogeneous beliefs in both complete and incomplete markets models; and there is a deeper account of forces that shape aggregate labor supply elasticities in lifecycle models.
The book is suitable for first- and second-year graduate courses in macroeconomics. Most chapters conclude with exercises; many exercises and examples use Matlab or Python computer programming languages.

The tasks of macroeconomics are to interpret observations on economic aggregates in terms of the motivations and constraints of economic agents and to predict the consequences of alternative hypothetical ways of administering government economic policy. General equilibrium models form a convenient context for analyzing such alternative government policies. In the past ten years, the strengths of general equilibrium models and the corresponding deficiencies of Keynesian and monetarist models of the 1960s have induced macroeconomists to begin applying general equilibrium models. This book describes some general equilibrium models that are dynamic, that have been built to help interpret time-series of observations of economic aggregates and to predict the consequences of alternative government interventions. The first part of the book describes dynamic programming, search theory, and real dynamic capital pricing models. Among the applications are stochastic optimal growth models, matching models, arbitrage pricing theories, and theories of interest rates, stock prices, and options. The remaining parts of the book are devoted to issues in monetary theory; currency-in-utility-function models, cash-in-advance models, Townsend turnpike models, and overlapping generations models are all used to study a set of common issues. By putting these models to work on concrete problems in exercises offered throughout the text, Sargent provides insights into the strengths and weaknesses of these models of money. An appendix on functional analysis shows the unity that underlies the mathematics used in disparate areas of rational expectations economics. This book on dynamic equilibrium macroeconomics is suitable for graduate-level courses; a companion book, Exercises in "Dynamic Macroeconomic Theory," provides answers to the exercises and is also available from Harvard University Press.

"Labor Markets and Business Cycles" integrates search and matching theory with the neoclassical growth model to better understand labor market outcomes. Robert Shimer shows analytically and quantitatively that rigid wages are important for explaining the volatile behavior of the unemployment rate in business cycles. The book focuses on the labor wedge that arises when the marginal rate of substitution between consumption and leisure does not equal the marginal product of labor. According to competitive models of the labor market, the labor wedge should be constant and equal to the labor income tax rate. But in U.S. data, the wedge is strongly countercyclical, making it seem as if recessions are periods when workers are dissuaded from working and firms are dissuaded from hiring because of an increase in the labor income tax rate. When job searches are time consuming and wages are flexible, search frictions - the cost of a job search - act like labor adjustment costs, further exacerbating inconsistencies between the competitive model and data. The book shows that wage rigidities can reconcile the search model with the data, providing a quantitatively more accurate depiction of labor markets, consumption, and investment dynamics. Developing detailed search and matching models, "Labor Markets and Business Cycles" will be the main reference for those interested in the intersection of labor market dynamics and business cycle research.

An equilibrium theory of unemployment assumes that firms and workers maximize their payoffs under rational expectations and that wages are determined to exploit the private gains from trade. This book focuses on the modeling of the transitions in and out of unemployment, given the stochastic processes that break up jobs and lead to the formation of new jobs, and on the implications of this approach for macroeconomic equilibrium and for the efficiency of the labor market.This approach to labor market equilibrium and unemployment has been successful in explaining the determinants of the "natural" rate of unemployment and new data on job and worker flows, in modeling the labor market in equilibrium business cycle and growth models, and in analyzing welfare policy. The second edition contains two new chapters, one on endogenous job destruction and one on search on the job and job-to-job quitting. The rest of the book has been extensively rewritten and, in several cases, simplified.

With the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, any pretense of a connection of the world's currencies to any real commodity has been abandoned. Yet since the 1980's, most central banks have abandoned money-growth targets as practical guidelines for monetary policy as well. How then can pure 'fiat' currencies be managed so as to create confidence in the stability of national units of account? "Interest and Prices" seeks to provide theoretical foundations for a rule-based approach to monetary policy suitable for a world of instant communications and ever more efficient financial markets. In such a world, effective monetary policy requires that central banks construct a conscious and articulate account of what they are doing.Michael Woodford re-examines the foundations of monetary economics, and shows how interest-rate policy can be used to achieve an inflation target in the absence of either commodity backing or control of a monetary aggregate. This book further shows how the tools of modern macroeconomic theory can be used to design an optimal inflation-targeting regime - one that balances stabilization goals with the pursuit of price stability in a way that is grounded in an explicit welfare analysis, and that takes account of the 'New Classical' critique of traditional policy evaluation exercises. It thus argues that rule-based policymaking need not mean adherence to a rigid framework unrelated to stabilization objectives for the sake of credibility, while at the same time showing the advantages of rule-based over purely discretionary policymaking.

Understanding China's Economic Indicators is the only guide to what China's statistics say about the state of the economy and how to use them to make more profitable investment decisions. Leading China market analyst Tom Orlik introduces China's 35 most important indicators, explaining why they matter and what they mean, identifying the distortions in the data, and spelling out the impact on equity, commodity, and currency markets.

Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today’s trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past thirty years. Across the world, the rich have prospered while workers can no longer afford to buy what they produce, have lost their jobs, or have been forced into higher levels of debt. In this thought‑provoking challenge to mainstream views, the authors provide a cohesive narrative that shows how the class wars of rising inequality are a threat to the global economy and international peace—and what we can do about it.

In the debris of the financial crash of 2008, the principles of John Maynard Keynes—that economic storms are a normal part of the market system, that governments need to step in and use fiscal ammunition to prevent these storms from becoming depressions, and that societies that value the pursuit of money should reprioritize—are more pertinent and applicable than ever. In Keynes: The Return of the Master , Robert Skidelsky brilliantly synthesizes Keynes career and life, and offers nervous capitalists a positive answer to the question we now face: When unbridled capitalism falters, is there an alternative?

This broad survey of unemployment will be a major source of reference for both scholars and students. It aims to provide a basis for better policy: showing how the lessons learned from experience and theory can be applied to greatly reduce the waste and misery of high unemployment. The book surveys in a clear, concise manner the main aspects of the unemployment problem. It integrates macroeconomics with a detailed micro-analysis of the labour market. It uses the authors' model to explain the puzzling post-war history of OECD unemployment and shows how unemployment and inflation are affected by systems of wage bargaining and unemployment insurance. For each issue the authors' develop a relevant theory, followed by extensive empirical analysis. The authors are established experts in the field, and this book gives their definitive treatment. Now revised to include an analysis of unemployment changes since 1991, it is clear the authors' original model has stood the test of time making this book a must read for any student studying economics at an advanced level.

Described by Noam Chomsky as 'a very important book', Guy Standing's The Precariat has achieved cult status as the first account of this emerging class of people, facing lives of insecurity, moving in and out of jobs that give little meaning to their lives.
Guy Standing warns that the rapid growth of the precariat is producing instabilities in society. It is a dangerous class because it is internally divided, leading to the villainisation of migrants and other vulnerable groups. And, lacking agency, its members may be susceptible to the siren calls of political extremism. He argues for a new politics, in which redistribution and income security are reconfigured and in which the fears and aspirations of the precariat are made central to a progressive strategy.
Since first publication of this book in 2011, the precariat has become an ever more significant global phenomenon, highly visible in the Occupy movement and in protest movements around the world.
In a new preface Guy Standing discusses such developments - are they indicative of the emergence of a new collective spirit, or do they simply reveal the growing size and growing anger of this new class?

The primary purpose of this book is to prepare students for empirical research in economics. But it also equips those who plan to specialize in econometric theory and those whose empirical interests are in sociology or business. Aimed at first-year graduate students and advanced undergraduates, "A Course in Econometrics" covers the fundamentals - classical regression and simultaneous equations - but also contains clear treatments of symptotic theory and nonlinear regression. The innovative features of the text include: (1) a focus on the conditional expectation function and best linear predictor as interesting characteristics of a population: (2) a thoughtful interpretation of assumptions on the disturbance term in linear regression; (3) a consistent development of estimators as sample analogs of population parameters; (4) a careful discussion of alternative sampling schemes to clarify the distinction between random and idea explanatory variables; (5) a development of asymptotic theory that emphasizes a simple prototypical case; (6) a cautionary treatment of the use and abuse of significance tests; (7) an introduction to simultaneous equation models that focuses on structural parameters as invariant across populations. The text includes instructive exercises and graphs, along with several complete data sets.

The Great Divergence brings new insight to one of the classic questions of history: Why did sustained industrial growth begin in Northwest Europe, despite surprising similarities between advanced areas of Europe and East Asia? As Ken Pomeranz shows, as recently as 1750, parallels between these two parts of the world were very high in life expectancy, consumption, product and factor markets, and the strategies of households. Perhaps most surprisingly, Pomeranz demonstrates that the Chinese and Japanese cores were no worse off ecologically than Western Europe. Core areas throughout the eighteenth-century Old World faced comparable local shortages of land-intensive products, shortages that were only partly resolved by trade.
Pomeranz argues that Europe's nineteenth-century divergence from the Old World owes much to the fortunate location of coal, which substituted for timber. This made Europe's failure to use its land intensively much less of a problem, while allowing growth in energy-intensive industries. Another crucial difference that he notes has to do with trade. Fortuitous global conjunctures made the Americas a greater source of needed primary products for Europe than any Asian periphery. This allowed Northwest Europe to grow dramatically in population, specialize further in manufactures, and remove labor from the land, using increased imports rather than maximizing yields. Together, coal and the New World allowed Europe to grow along resource-intensive, labor-saving paths.
Meanwhile, Asia hit a cul-de-sac. Although the East Asian hinterlands boomed after 1750, both in population and in manufacturing, this growth prevented these peripheral regions from exporting vital resources to the cloth-producing Yangzi Delta. As a result, growth in the core of East Asia's economy essentially stopped, and what growth did exist was forced along labor-intensive, resource-saving paths--paths Europe could have been forced down, too, had it not been for favorable resource stocks from underground and overseas.

"Economists and Societies" is the first book to systematically compare the profession of economics in the United States, Britain, and France, and to explain why economics, far from being a uniform science, differs in important ways among these three countries. Drawing on in-depth interviews with economists, institutional analysis, and a wealth of scholarly evidence, Marion Fourcade traces the history of economics in each country from the late nineteenth century to the present, demonstrating how each political, cultural, and institutional context gave rise to a distinct professional and disciplinary configuration. She argues that because the substance of political life varied from country to country, people's experience and understanding of the economy, and their political and intellectual battles over it, crystallized in different ways - through scientific and mercantile professionalism in the United States, public-minded elitism in Britain, and statist divisions in France. Fourcade moves past old debates about the relationship between culture and institutions in the production of expert knowledge to show that scientific and practical claims over the economy in these three societies arose from different elites with different intellectual orientations, institutional entanglements, and social purposes. Much more than a history of the economics profession, "Economists and Societies" is a revealing exploration of American, French, and British society and culture as seen through the lens of their respective economic institutions and the distinctive character of their economic experts.

In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the "great transformation" of the Industrial Revolution. His analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism. New introductory material reveals the renewed importance of Polanyi's seminal analysis in an era of globalization and free trade.