In the early 1980s, rational expectations and new classical economics dominated macroeconomic theory. This essay evolved from theauthors' profound disagreement with that trend. It demonstrates notonly how the new classical view got macroeconomics wrong, but also howto go about doing macroeconomics the right way.

The world financial crisis of 2007–2008 dramatically showed the importance of credit and financial relations for the efficient working of the economy. For a long time mainstream macroeconomics ignored these aspects and concentrated only on the real sector or just took into account the most elementary picture of the financial side of the economy. This book aims at explaining why this happened through an historical excursion of 20th century mainstream macroeconomic theory.

This book retraces the history of macroeconomics from Keynes's General Theory to the present. Central to it is the contrast between a Keynesian era and a Lucasian - or dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) - era, each ruled by distinct methodological standards. In the Keynesian era, the book studies the following theories: Keynesian macroeconomics, monetarism, disequilibrium macro (Patinkin, Leijongufvud, and Clower) non-Walrasian equilibrium models, and first-generation new Keynesian models. Three stages are identified in the DSGE era: new classical macro (Lucas), RBC modelling, and second-generation new Keynesian modeling. The book also examines a few selected works aimed at presenting alternatives to Lucasian macro. While not eschewing analytical content, Michel De Vroey focuses on substantive assessments, and the models studied are presented in a pedagogical and vivid yet critical way.

Recent developments in public economics have largely been in the direction of reaffirming the limits of the market and of establishing new ones. The possible existence of fundamental non-convexities, imperfect and asymmetric information, incentive compatibility, imperfect competition, strategic complementarity, and scale economies led to the conclusion that a large set of market failures exist; such situations also imply government failure. Acocella, considers this complicated picture and provides a discussion of the different approaches to establishing social 'rankings' of the possible situations and the underlying principles. The arguments for and against different institutions are then analysed at a micro and macroeconomic level. The market and the government are recognised as imperfect, and thus complementary, institutions. Specific policy targets and instruments are considered in the areas of micro and macro-economic policy. Special attention is devoted to questions of policy management in an open economy. Finally, problems of domestic and international policy co-ordination are considered.

In a time of unprecedented economic uncertainty, this book provides empirical guidance to the economy and what to expect in the near and distant future. Beginning with a historic look at major contributions to economic indicators and business cycles starting with Wesley Clair Mitchell (1913) to Burns and Mitchell (1946), to Moore (1961) and Zarnowitz (1992), this book explores time series forecasting and economic cycles, which are currently maintained and enhanced by The Conference Board. Given their highly statistically significant relationship with GDP and the unemployment rate, these relationships are particularly useful for practitioners to help predict business cycles.

This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out in that volume: (i) examining the philosophical and methodological fallacies of this turn in modern economic theory that the removal of the moral motivation of economic agents from modern economic theory has entailed; and (ii) proposing a return descriptive economics as the means with which the moral content of economic life could be restored in economic theory. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the methodology of economics, ethics, philosophers concerned with agency and economists who build economic models that rest in the intention of the agent.

Hahn on Methodology: The Quest for Understanding addresses two fundamental questions: (i) what is distinctive about economic theorising?; (ii) what is the cognitive value of the outcome of this activity of economic theorising, i.e. economic theory. We will argue that for Hahn, economic theorising is distinctive with respect to four dimensions. Firstly, the aim of economic theory is neither to describe nor explain the real economic world, as in the physical sciences. Rather the aim is to achieve objective, but non-scientific, understanding. Secondly, the central question for economic theory remains for Hahn how to understand, but not to predict as in physics for instance, how decentralised choices interact and perhaps get co-ordinated. Thirdly, Hahn identifies ‘three commitments’ without which, he argues, economic theorising for him is not possible. Finally, economic theorising has a distinctive approach, which Hahn calls its ‘grammar of argumentation’ .