Macroeconomics

We've all heard about the great economic miracle of the past twenty years. What we haven't heard, though, is that the rate of growth has significantly slowed from pre-1973 levels. This book explains why, and shows that we may be able to achieve high growth rates again. The authors criticize the "Wall Street Model" of growth, which stresses low inflation and enhanced savings. This model, they say, leads to increased inequality and slower growth. The authors present an alternative "Main Street Model" which instead stresses technological innovation as the main driver of growth. The keys to increasing technological innovation are public investments in R&D and infrastructure, as well as increasing demand through higher minimum wages and a stronger role for unions. This book coherently presents this new model of growth and explains why the Wall Street model is flawed. This book has an unashamedly left-wing bias and some people may be put off by the more opinionated parts of this book. I found myself wishing the authors would stick to facts instead of shoving ideas in your face that can't be backed up. In one part of the book the authors discuss the "neoclassical growth syllogism" and try to show how flawed it is. To do this, they examine each premise of the syllogism and assign a seemingly arbitrary percentage describing how true the premise is. You just can't do that. If you give me a number, you better be able to support it with facts or else you're wasting my time. These authors are probably well educated and they should know better than to whimsically pull numbers out of their [fundaments.]

Using historical data on the rate of increase of productivity, these authors build a convincing case that the United States is near the beginning of an economic boom based on information technlogy. They go well beyond most economists in explaining the nature of economic long waves (also called Kondratieff waves). They then explain in depth how current government economic policies are misdirected in terms of maximizing this pattern of economic growth.

The book is based on ex post iteration of events and investment strategies, which lacks the necessary foundation of macroeconomic introduction. It requires extensive knowledge of macroeconomics and finance in order to grasp (or digest) what the ideas behind strategies are. Clearly not for a beginner but I would not recommend it for an experienced fund manager at all. I found most of the examples and strategies highly simple.

Feeling brave? If you are, crack Burstein's book and have a look at how some serious big-time money works. Of course, by defintion this is not the majority of market participants so this is not a "popular" read.

But scientific truth, like a successful P&L statement, is not democratic. Either it makes money or it does not. And if does, you can bet that a few will get it right but most won't.

As an arbitrageur, Burstien's book is an excellent unfair advantage to those who are able to heed its message.

Christopher MAY - author Nonlinear Pricing

this is undoubtly an intresting book,but its main problem is the weaknesses in growth theory.furthermore,i believe it should be improoved in its explanations and the depth of the knowledge it provides.concluding,it is an excellent book for a begginer level,but not an intermidiate one

this book focused on certain economics issue and is excellent for readers with an intermediate knowledge on macroeconomics. however it does not have much graphical explanations

Overall, a good book for students and business people who wish to gain more knowledge of macroeconomic theory. Very good examples of real life situations, and excellent descriptions of how the theorems work. I would recommend this to economic students wishing to excel in class and business people with the need for economic theory in relation to commodity purchases.

The book was in new condition and I got it at a great price. I can't ask for more. Thanks!

The problem here is that almost everything in the book they have already published elsewhere, and thus only is a slight updating of earlier results. It is nice to have them altogether in one source, but the underlying methodology is so questionable as to render it not worthwhile.

The empirical tests to distinguish between various models of political business cycles and partisan theory have been justly criticized. The authors could have made an important contribution by altering their work to properly incorporate the critics, but instead simply restate the problems, pay a little lip service to the issues, and then proceed to ignore them without proper justification.

Alberto Alesina is one of the leading scholars to adapt that new theory of macroeconomics to the possibility of political goals and motivations on the part of policy makers. And "Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy" is the most comprehensive and authoritative statement of scholarship in this field. It is a theoretical and empirical statement of the state of the art in political macroeconomics. It contains a review of alternative theories and fresh empirical tests. It builds on a decade or more of empirical work by Alesina, with the present colleagues and others, and by many other scholars.

Alesina and his colleagues begin with an intellectual map of opportunistic and partisan theories, for each of which there are traditional models with an exploitable Phillips curve and models that are consistent with rational expectations. The conclusions are that the rational choice and rational expectations theories are more successful than their more traditional predecessors and that the partisan model is more successful than the opportunistic model in explaining macroeconomic behavior. That is, the designated winner on both theoretical and empirical grounds is "rational partisan theory," of which the leading scholar is Alberto Alesina himself. The theories are tested with data for the United States and for most of the developed economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)....

Although the book's empirical work pertains to most OECD nations, there is a separate chapter devoted to political cycles in the United States. Descriptive data regarding inflation, unemployment, and growth are presented, organized by party and position in the electoral cycle. Hypotheses are tested on data for the period from 1947 through 1994. Results support the rational partisan theory and fail to support opportunistic electoral cycle hypotheses. For nonspecialists the most telling evidence in favor of the "rational partisan" theory, as opposed to the traditional theory, is that differences between the parties on unemployment and growth are confined to the first half of administrations, in response to the element of surprise in electoral outcomes, but the differences dissipate in the second half.

"Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy" is a state-of-the-art presentation of an important field bridging economics and political science. Although the technical level of the book is high (some chapters have more than a score of equations), the book is accessible to serious readers and will be rewarding to them. It simultaneously advances the study of macroeconomics and the study of political processes and institutions. It is a fine book.

Some people seem to mistake bad writing for brilliance in content. The reason that many reviews seem to have trouble understanding some of the contents in the book should be an argument against the book, not an argument for its technical difficulties derived from some people's own uncertainty about their skills in maths.
I thoroughly advise people not to waste time looking into this book, let alone buy it which will be a waste of money as well.
I have not found a perfect macroeconomics textbook yet. But David Romer's Advanced Macroeconomics is much better than this one in every way.

While this book is certainly a standard in graduate programs as a survey of modern theory, most people do not want a survey of modern theory from this perspective. This book has garnered itself three stars because of the difficulty of covering the spectrum of macro theory. Even for a graduate student in economics I am not ashamed to say that this book gave me a lot of trouble because of its prose style. This is a book that truly assumes familiarity not with economics but with macro theory, that is the systems of equations and methods. For some one wanting a self-teaching guide for macroeconomics I would recommend trying to find a general audience book, but for a survey of macroeconomics past the undergraduate level I recommend David Romer's Advanced Macroeconomics. Not that AM is ideal either but it is easier to follow.

I loved this book since I first read it. It's a complete book in terms of modern macroeconomic theory topics covered and in the treatment of them. The authors have focused in modern development in the field and have tried to gather a significant collection of models and theories which explain several aspects of the macroeconomic analysis (just check the index to find out all that you can read here!).
A drawback of this book is that it's kinda specialized in modern macro development and its methods: it assumes that the reader knows about basic macro theory, macro models, has strong mathematical foundations (calculus, systems of equations, optimum control theory, etc.) AND is used to the kind of relationship economists do between models and real life. This is NOT a book of macroeconomic policies, like how to manage a nation's deficit in the public budget, or so; but researches could find here the basis for developing more specific recommendations and policies to address such problems.

As an academic who loves to shop, I was hoping this would provide a more balanced account of the rise and impact of mass consumerism. He is certainly right that academics and other relatively privileged strata have something of a knee-jerk animus to mass pleasure. But the book is a complete failure. It amounts to little more than a defense brief for mass consumerism--and like a good defense lawyer, he ignores evidence that doesn't fit his case, distorts the arguments of his foes, and offers a rosy, unreal view of his client. ... Skip.

First, it was quite obvious that the author has some sort of animus against non-materialism, since he seems to glory in taking gratuitous chops at environmentalists, the voluntary simplicity movement, and pretty much anyone who doesn't agree with him. I was thoroughly sick of it by the end of the first chapter.

Second, he does not back up many of his assertions, despite a plethora of footnotes. For instance, he asserts that kitchens have gotten smaller in the last few decades (seemingly as a way of proving that we eat more take out and less home cooked food), without stating whether he means suburban or urban kitchens, new construction or remodelling, apartment, condo or detached kitchens...you get the picture. There are similarly unsupported assertions about trash disposal, landfills, and teenage buying patterns.

Finally, it was *dull*. The only parts that were even vaguely entertaining were the last few chapters, when the polemics were replaced by personal reporting of his trip to a mall. I learned very little about American materialism, and far more than I wished about the author's political biases.

A huge disappointment.

An interesting read about the invasive consumerism of the 20th century. His basic take is we buy what we want, it isn't foisted on us by advertsing. All that you see on TV is an ad, including the "news", the sitcom set, ie house, clothes, pots, pans, lamps and has been since the beginning of TV. And that "Democracy" is the freedom to buy what you want when you want it.

He makes a good case that this has been what people "really" want since time imortal. And that no amount of whining about how it isn't good for you can compete with the almighty dollar. Simply put, if you really didn't want it, you wouldn't buy it.

I do agree that he can get long winded in his arguments.

Anyone looking to start up another .com company would do well to read this first.

I was excited to find this book based on the tittle and book description, mainly because I felt I was going to get a book of facts to bolster my already formed opinions. Well the book did provide facts, lots of facts sometimes not in the best order, but facts none the less. What the author and publisher failed to realize is that in the method the book was written the average reader would find it almost impossible to plod through the text. I had a college statistics professor that was Asian with a very strong accent, and the ability to stand at the front of the room and drone on and on without every moving his body or using the black board (an interesting feat in a math class) that was more lively then this book. I am assuming that even economics professors aged 65 and over would think this book to be dry and dull.

The net effect of the bone dry text and the overwhelming amount of facts, charts and lists of numbers is that a book I was excited to read turned out to be a downright pain to get through. It turned into a labor of love or some sick need to finish the book that finally got me through to the end. I feel like I deserved some medal for completing this thing. Overall the facts are interesting (in small doses) but the written was one that would bore the dead.

Exploiting class envy is as old as civilization itself,and this book is another exercise in just that.I don't question the validity of Mr. Phillips arguments or stasistics.Sure the wealthier get wealthier or at least maintain their wealth from generation to generation(barring catastrophe)but that is because when you are talking in terms of millions of dollars money automatically makes itself grow.Someone worth $5,000,000 this year will with safe,predictable,long-term investments see an increase in their wealth till the day they die.Poor to middle class people on the other hand won't see a great buildup of wealth simply due to the fact that they don't have enough wealth to exponentially grow year after year.Even an idiot can stick $5,000,000 in the bank,leave it alone,and in five or six years have $6,000,000.Of course if you only have $20,000 in the bank it won't ever be much more than $20,000.All societies have an unequal concentration of wealth and always will.Most so-called economic booms do benefit mainly the upper classes while recessions hit the poorest the hardest.Phillips does a thorough job of exposing the boom of the 80's for the myth that it was, but all in all he has written nothing we didn't already know.

The myths (or many of them)of the right are given full exposure in this fine book. Well researched and well written, it is a good primer on the delusions of the privledged class (just read some of the other reviews on this page).
Over all a significant contribution to the new analysis of conservative revisionism.

This is just a poorly written book. I am surprised that this book has not been reviewed extensively. This was so bad that I could not find places where I can say that I learned something valuable without hitting myself. This is so bad that one cannot fine anything that is good and praise it. Bradford Delong is just an awful writer and doing no justice with the subject. I found his book worse than the already worse textbook in the market. I hope there is no second edition to this ridiculous experiment that has gone bad.

I don't normally bother to review books, but the comments on this book are so bizarre I feel the need to respond. This is a textbook for the intermediate macroeconomics level. Someone coming to this book with no economics background at all might find the book hard going in places, but that is to be expected; it is not intended as a piece of popular writing on economics.

I am very familiar with intermediate macroeconomic textbooks -- indeed, I wrote ancillary material for one of the leading textbooks currently on the market -- and I think DeLong's textbook is one of the best books around. For many topics it is *the* best book.

This is an excellent intermediate Macro textbook, and the writing style is more acessible than one usually encounters at this level of economics.
The theory is up-to-date and couched in less political dogma than similar products from other sources.

This is not an introduction to Macro!
This is a first-term MBA or intermediate BA/BS course!

Given the lower quality of the competing texts I have read, I put down most low reviews to sight-unseen grousing by partisans who wish to inflict monetary loss on Professor DeLong for his political views.
In todays political climate this is unsurprising, but it is quite disturbing that it has reached this far into solid science.

The Parkin book is dumb down but so much so that you dont understand Microeconomics the way you'll need to if you plan on taking advanced theory, money and banking, etc.

I prefer McConnell Brue who has been the staple and bible of Microeconomics for years!

Smart universities choose McConnell Brue and dumb ones like Micro econ at Rice seem to choose Parkin.

Parkin's text was designed for the beginning economics student. Those who state that the text is not rigorous enough should understand the text was not written for the advanced student. Those who complain that the text is replete with explanations of basic topics do not understand that beginning students need reaffirmation of presented concepts. Parkin's text strives to appeal to the broad base of students without the dilution that seems to occur when a text is written with "non-majors" in mind. I read several introductory texts before adopting the Parkin text for my advanced placement class. I chose the Parkin text because it provided the optimum mix of rigor and explanation, without sacrificing analysis (within a mathematical context) for a purely verbal approach.

I have used Parkin as an auxilliary source for my micro 102 classes for years. His examples are products that can be related to by 19-year-olds, AND he does not use wheat or other perfectly competitive products to exemplify a downward sloping demand curve! Many other do, which causes great confusion among the students. What is wrong with careful, thoughtful, comprehensive explanations of concepts that are difficult for first time micro students? He covers several complicated topics that are left out of the more highly rated texts by Mankiw and others. I am wondering if we are even rating the same book...I give it the maximum rating!