Teaching Macro Principles after the Financial Crisis

The stunning events of 2007-2009 both shook the world and piqued interest in economics. In the 30-plus years that I have been teaching macro principles, I have never seen the level of interest in students as high as what I observed last year rapt attention and no sleepers! Interest in economics has grown, and our students will want, expect, and deserve explanations of these events for years to come. This is truly a teaching moment, and that moment is going to be a long one. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the current curriculum fails to give students even imperfect answers. This means that the macro principles course will have to be changed. Although we can’t provide beginning students with complete answers, we can do a lot better than we have been doing.