华南理工大学《宏观经济学》princ-ch36-presentation.ppt

In the textbook, each of the five debates is accompanied by an “In the News” box with articles personally selected by Greg Mankiw from publications such as The Economist, The Financial Times, and others. Much of the value of this chapter to students comes from reading these articles. The goal of this chapter is not to present significant new material. In fact, much of the material here is review. For example, the first debate (on active stabilization policy) was covered at the end of the chapter entitled “The Influence of Monetary and Fiscal Policy on Aggregate Demand.” Also, the arguments for reforming the tax laws to boost saving should be apparent from the earlier chapters on economic growth, saving, and investment. Instead, this chapter aims to get students thinking about what they’ve learned about macroeconomics and to use their new knowledge to form some opinions about the major issues economists and policymakers debate. As a result, it is not a difficult chapter, and most instructors cover it fairly quickly. * * In the first bullet point, “incompetent” is not meant to be an insult. Economics is an inexact science at best. It’s quite possible that people appear highly qualified when they’re appointed to the Fed but run into the limits of their knowledge as the future unfolds. For example, I’m sure President Bush thought Michael Brown was highly qualified when he appointed “Brownie” in March 2003 to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It turned out that was not quite the case when an actual emergency (Hurricane Katrina) occurred and required federal management and coordination of assistance. Here are a couple more examples of time-inconsistent policy (which I found in Mankiw’s intermediate macro textbook): The government announces that it will never negotiate with terrorists over the release of hostages to give would-be hostage-takers the expectation that holding hostages would give them no power. But once hostages are