Things I think could have been done better in Mankiw's Macroeconomics...

page 3: "Every era has its own economic problems. In the 1970s... inflation. In the 1980s, inflation subsided, but Presidents Reagan and Bush presided over large federal budget deficits. In the 1990s, as President Bill Clinton occupied the Oval Office... the budget deficit... turned into a small surplus, but Federal taxes as a share of national income reached a historic high." But Federal spending as a share of national income was not at a historic high--was in fact lower than it had been since the mid-1970s. So how is this a problem?

the case study on page 64 cannot compare the 1980s deficit experience to the model's predictions because the model is a closed-economy model, and the open nature of the U.S. economy is key to understanding the 1980s.

page 90: "...a benevolent policymaker would want to choose the steady-state with the highest level of consumption... the golden rule level of capital..." No she wouldn't. This is one place where Mankiw's book is clearer than the truth.

Three different definitions of the golden rule, corresponding to different models--but students have a hard time figuring out that the concept changes as the model changes

page 91: "At the golden rule level of capital, the marginal product of capital equals the depreciation rate."

page 100: "In the golden rule steady state, the marginal product of capital net of depreciation equals the rate of population growth"

page 108: "That is, at the golen rule level of capital, the net marginal product of capital MPK - delta equals the rate of growth of total output n+g. Because actual economies experience both population growth and technological progress, we must use this criterion to evaluate whether they have more or less capital than at the golden rule."

Too skimpy on growth facts

Too many "growth facts" are clearer than the truth

page 110: "...economies with similar cultures and policies... converge.. at a rate of about 2% per year"; the implicit definition of "policy" is "having the same investment and population growth rates"

page 110: "For historical reasons, such as the Civil War... income levels varied greatly among states a century ago." A century ago the Civil War had been over for 30 years. Why did the--immensely more destructive--WWII have no permanent effect on German or Japanese income levels, and yet the Civil War had a big negative effect on the south? Something is not right here...

page 110: "The economies of the world exhibit conditional convergence to their own steady states... determined by saving, population growth, and education." But all three of these are as much effects as causes of growth.

page 112: if the U.S. is well below the appropriate savings rate, then why are high taxes to generate a budget surplus a problem?

Table 5-2 grossly overstates the slowdown in steady-state growth path growth in western Europe. It conflates a slowdown in TFP growth with a slowdown in growth produced by convergence to the steady-state growth path from below.

Endogenous growth section inappropriate. What use is the AK model? Then there is a "research universities" model...

page 129: in a book published in 2000, table 5.3 has no business stopping in 1996

page 148: discussion of sectoral shifts and unemployment cites nothing more recent than Lilien

page 162: "experience shows that the assumption of constant velocity provides a good approximation to many situations." Once again, clearer than the truth.

§8-2. Why so much space on small open economies? Not many students live in them.

page 209: no description of how the real exchange rate converges to its equilibrium

international model with no possibility for interest rate differentials...

§9-2 starting with the constant-velocity quantity theory as a theory of aggregate demand generates part of this book's overload of different models

virtually none of chapter 9 survives intact through chapter 13. Model-of-the-week overkill

I don't like the use of "r" on the LM diagram

figures 11-1 and 11-2 make sense only if governments peg money stocks--which they don't

page 290 is weak and unsatisfactory

§11-2: suddenly adding deflation to the IS-LM model to account for the Great Depression comes as a shock. The multiple equilibrium question is then ducked.

13: all of a sudden short-run aggregate-supply is no longer horizontal

Mankiw Excellences