The book aims to give non-economists a detailed understanding of how macroeconomic policy works in modern economies, and the issues it faces. The world has recently been through a huge economic crisis and thinking people everywhere have reason to wonder whether something is not seriously wrong...

In a paper in the March 2004 AER, Justine Hastings concludes that the acquisition of an independent gasoline retailer, Thrifty, by a vertically integrated firm, ARCO, is associated with sizable price increases at competing stations. To better understand the novel mechanism to which she...

1. Introduction : to Utopia and back -- 2. The demise of economic management -- 3. The monetarist experiment and its legacy -- 4. The 1990s synthesis -- 5. Problems under the 1990s synthesis -- 6. The global financial crisis -- 7. Monetary policy -- 8. Fiscal policy -- 9. Exchange rate policy --...