Macroeconomics: An Introduction

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Cambridge University Press, Sep 30, 2021 - Business & Economics - 220 pages
Macroeconomics: An Introduction, provides a lucid and novel introduction to macroeconomic issues. It introduces the reader to an alternative approach of understanding macroeconomics, which is inspired by the works of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and Piero Sraffa. It also presents the reader with a critical account of mainstream marginalist macroeconomics. The book begins with a brief history of economic theories and then takes the reader through three different ways of conceptualizing the macroeconomy. Subsequently, the theories of money and interest rates, output and employment levels, and economic growth are discussed. The book ends by providing a policy template for addressing the macroeconomic concerns of unemployment and inflation. The conceptual discussion in Macroeconomics is situated within the context of the Indian economy. Besides using publicly available data, the contextual description is instantiated using excerpts from works of fiction by Indian authors.
 

Contents

Chapter
1
Conceptualising the macroeconomy
20
Money and interest rates
39
Is Hajmola money? The management of liquidity 48
48
Macroeconomic policy levers
60
Output and employment levels
64
Full employment is a fluke
69
Economic growth
90
Paradigm warehouse
122
livelihood strategy
132
The policy objective of full employment
138
The role of the government
146
The Mahalanobis model
157
The policy objective of low inflation
163
On basic and nonbasic products
171
Towards good economics
186

Chapter 5
92
The nature of economic growth matters
100
The dual nature of investment 91
113
Why economic theory matters
116
Data sources
198
Index
209
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About the author (2021)

Alex M. Thomas is Assistant Professor of Economics at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, India. His primary research is in the area of history of economic thought, with a special focus on classical economics. His research has been published in both national and international journals such as Economic & Political Weekly, History of Economic Ideas, History of Economics Review, and Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics.

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