Teaching Macroeconomics: Brad DeLong's Online Resources

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My Fall 2001 Macroeconomics Course Website | my lecture notes for this year's class

See the CEA-JEC Recent Economic Indicators for Current U.S. Macroeconomic Data

Have something you think would be useful for teaching intermediate macro? Submit it either as a url or an attachment, and I'll try to find a place for it on this website.

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Textbook: Organization and Sample Chapters (.pdf format):

Part I: Introduction

• Preface
• Chapter 1: Introduction (manuscript, .pdf format)
• Chapter 2: Measuring the Macroeconomy (manuscript, .pdf format)
• Chapter 3: Thinking Like an Economist (manuscript, .pdf format)

Part II: Long-Run Growth

• Introduction to Growth Theory: a handout/my notes I used this year to motivate the building of the growth model. Knowing where they were going, why they were going there, and what they would be able to do when they got there seemed to be a great help in helping the students over what is always an arid part of the syllabus.
• Chapter 4: Theory of Economic Growth (manuscript, .pdf format); Theory of Economic Growth (galleys; .pdf format)
  • Appendix to Chapter 4: Growth Accounting
  • Advanced Math-Heavy: Appendix to Chapter 4: How Fast Does the Economy Head Towards Its Steady-State Balanced-Growth Path?
  • Advanced Math-Heavy: Appendix to Chapter 4: Growth Theory: The Golden Rule
  • Alternative Draft of Chapter 4 (less demanding of students, but it covers less too)
• Chapter 5: Facts of Economic Growth (manuscript, .pdf format); Facts of Economic Growth (galleys; pdf format)
  • Advanced Math-Heavy A Model of the Pre-Industrial Malthusian Economy

Part III: Flexible-Price Macroeconomics

• Chapter 6: Building Blocks of the Flexible Price Model
• Chapter 7: Equilibrium in the Flexible Price Model
  • Flex-Price Primer: Using the Flexible-Price Model
• Chapter 8: Money, Prices, and Inflation

Part IV: Sticky-Price Macroeconomics

• Chapter 9: The Income-Expenditure Framework
  • The Effect of a Tax Change on Equilibrium Real GDP
• Chapter 10: Investment, Net Exports, and Interest Rates
• Chapter 11: Extending the Sticky Price Model
• Chapter 12: The Phillips Curve and Expectations

Part V: Macroeconomic Policy

• Chapter 13: Stabilization Policy

• Appendix to Chapter 13: Central Bank Credibility and Consistency:
  • (Advanced Math-Heavy Version)

• Chapter 14: The Government Budget, the National Debt, and Investment
• Chapter 15: International Economic Policy
  • International Financial Crises: Analytics (pdf, doc)
• Chapter 16: Changes in the Macroeconomy and Changes in Macroeconomic Policy
• Chapter 17: The Future of Macroeconomics
  • Extra Reading: Olivier Blanchard, "What Do We Know About Macroeconomics that Fisher and Wicksell Did Not?" (NBER Working Paper 7550).
• Epilogue
• The online version of the Glossary
• Data: Historical and Recent (but Not Current) U.S. Economic Data
  • For current U.S. economic data, see the CEA-JEC Recent Economic Indicators.

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Why I Wrote This Textbook:

I wrote this book out of a sense that undergrad macro needed to have the barnacles scraped off of its hull. It is more than three-quarters of a century since Keynes wrote his Tract on Monetary Reform; it is two-thirds of a century since Hicks and Hansen drew their IS and LM curves; it is more than one-third of a century since Friedman and Phelps demolished the static Phillips curve, and since Lucas, Sargent, and Barro taught us what rational expectations could mean. All this time undergrad macro has been becoming more complicated, as new material is added while old material remains. It seemed to me that if I could successfully streamline the presentation of material, both traditional and more modern, the result would be a more understandable and comprehensible book. I hope that I have succeeded—that this book does move more smoothly through the water than its competitors, and will prove to be a better textbook for third-millennium macroeconomics courses.

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Why I Think This Textbook Is Good:

I believe that it is good because I have succeeded in doing five things:

Providing a more intuitive presentation of growth theory, one that makes it easier to apply growth theory to real-world economies.

Providing a much more comprehensive and deep presentation of growth facts--one that gives students enough information to understand the cross-time and cross-economy pattern of long-run economic growth.

Integrating the international side into the course from the very beginning, thus avoiding all those awkward "in the closed economy chapter we taught you... but that was wrong because the economy is open... what is really true is... " passages.

Deemphasizing the LM curve and stressing that real-world central banks peg interest rates and not the money supply, thus removing the yawning gulf between what students learn in class and what they read in the newspaper about monetary policy.

Closely integrating the aggregate supply curve and the Phillips curve, so that students grasp from the beginning that these are two different perspectives on the same concepts--thus avoiding the trap of spending weeks building AS-AD analytical tools that cannot be easily applied to real-world economies.

The result? A textbook that focuses on the macro theory that economists believe is accurate and relevant, and on the application of this theory to the world in which our students live and will live.

Head-to-Head Comparisons:

Growth: a detailed comparison

Monetary policy: a detailed comparison

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Excellences of the Competition:

But this does not mean that I think that the other, competing textbooks are without value. The more I study them, the more impressive they seem to me:

• Abel and Bernanke; comprehensive and thorough; the only textbook I have studied closely that is comprehensive enough to serve as a true reference; has perhaps the greatest information content of any I have studied in depth--but it is not an easy read, for reasons of style and density.
• Blanchard; a tour through how Olivier Blanchard thinks about macroeconomic issues; master this book and you have a comprehensive grasp of how one of our very best macroeconomists thinks about the world--but it is a tough and demanding book, one that I have been scared to give it to any except my very best undergraduates.
• Mankiw; by far the clearest of any of the books; Greg Mankiw is the master of exposition, for there is no one who can better explain economic concepts to students--but too large a proportion of the book is hard to apply to real-world economies.

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Website Extras

• Timely Materials Useful for Teachers
• Growth Theory Primer: An Introduction to Growth Theory
• Alternative Draft of Chapter 4 (less demanding of students, but it covers less too)
• Appendix to Chapter 4: Growth Accounting
• Advanced Math-Heavy: Appendix to Chapter 4: How Fast Does the Economy Head Towards Its Steady-State Balanced-Growth Path?
• Advanced Math-Heavy: Appendix to Growth Theory: The Golden Rule
• Advanced Math-Heavy: Appendix to Chapter 5: A Model of the Pre-Industrial Malthusian Economy
• Flex-Price Primer: Using the Flexible-Price Model
• The Effect of a Tax Change on Equilibrium Real GDP
• Appendix to Chapter 13: Central Bank Credibility and Consistency:
  • (Advanced Math-Heavy Version)
• Appendix to Chapter 15: International Financial Crises: Analytics (pdf, doc)
• Errata
  • All that I know about have been fixed in the upcoming printing; but I'm sure that more will emerge: send 'em to me at delong@econ.berkeley.edu
• European Data
• Rest of the World Data
• Simple Animations Library: canned demonstrations/animated graphs for review

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Essays on Teaching

• Jeff Zax's magnificent article on Being a Section Leader, which should be read by all section leaders and all lecturers.
• Josh Skov on Teaching Writing

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McGraw-Hill's Website For This Textbook

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