Economics 702 Section 2 (second half): Macroeconomics I - Policy
Figure 1: Series highlighted by the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee.
Syllabus | Academic Integrity |
Important Dates |
Downloadable Course Materials and Information Sources |
Department of Economics
Robert M. LaFollette School of Public Affairs |
LECTURE: MW 1-2:15, SocSci 5106
Instructor for second half of course
Professor Menzie Chinn
Office Hours: MW 2-3 until 3/9, TBA thereafter
7418 Social Sciences
Tel: (608) 262-7397
email: mchinn@lafollette.wisc.edu
Home Page
Econ 702 Sec 2 Syllabus in PDF file.
This course will address current issues in modern macroeconomics.
Gar n, Julio; Robert Lester; and, Eric Sims. 2018. Intermediate Macroeconomics. https://www3.nd.edu/~esims1/gls_textbook.html Other required readings are listed below. In addition, some readings from Econbrowser will be assigned.
Academic Integrity: Academic Integrity is critical to maintaining fair and knowledge based learning at UW Madison. Academic dishonesty is a serious violation: it undermines the bonds of trust and honesty between members of our academic community, degrades the value of your degree and defrauds those who may eventually depend upon your knowledge and integrity.
Examples of academic misconduct include, but are not limited to: cheating on an examination (copying from another student's paper, referring to materials on the exam other than those explicitly permitted, continuing to work on an exam after the time has expired, turning in an exam for regrading after making changes to the exam), copying the homework of someone else, submitting for credit work done by someone else, stealing examinations or course materials, tampering with the grade records or with another student's work, or knowingly and intentionally assisting another student in any of the above. Students are reminded that online sources, including anonymous or unattributed ones like Wikipedia, still need to be cited like any other source; and copying from any source without attribution is considered plagiarism.
The Dept. of Economics will deal with these offenses harshly following UWS14 procedures:
- The penalty for misconduct in most cases will be removal from the course and a failing grade,
- The department will inform the Dean of Students as required and additional sanctions may be applied.
- The department will keep an internal record of misconduct incidents. This information will be made available to teaching faculty writing recommendation letters and to admission offices of the School of Business and Engineering.
If you think you see incidents of misconduct, you should tell your instructor about them, in which case they will take appropriate action and protect your identity. You could also choose to contact our administrator Tammy Herbst-Koel therbst@wisc.edu) and your identity will be kept confidential.
For more information, refer to https://www.students.wisc.edu/doso/academic-integrity/
otect your identity. You could also choose to contact our administrator and your identity will be kept confidential.
Grievance Procedure: The Department of Economics has developed a grievance procedure through which you may register comments or complaints about a course, an instructor, or a teaching assistant. The Department continues to provide a course evaluation each semester in every class. If you wish to make anonymous complaints to an instructor or teaching assistant, the appropriate vehicle is the course evaluation. If you have a disagreement with an instructor or a teaching assistant, we strongly encourage you to try to resolve the dispute with him or her directly. The grievance procedure is designed for situations where neither of these channels is appropriate.
If you wish to file a grievance, you should go to room 7238 Social Science and request a Course Comment Sheet. When completing the comment sheet, you will need to provide a detailed statement that describes what aspects of the course you find unsatisfactory. You will need to sign the sheet and provide your student identification number, your address, and a phone where you can be reached. The Department plans to investigate comments fully and will respond in writing to complaints.
Your name, address, phone number, and student ID number will not be revealed to the instructor or teaching assistant involved and will be treated as confidential. The Department needs this information, because it may become necessary for a commenting student to have a meeting with the department chair or a nominee to gather additional information. A name and address are necessary for providing a written response.
- Midterm 1: 3/12, 5:30-7, Social Sciences 5208
- Midterm 2: 5/1, 5:30-7, Social Sciences 5208
Downloadable Course Materials
Required On-line Readings
- Gali Gali, Jordi, "The State of New Keynesian Economics: A Partial Assessment," Journal of Economic Perspectives 2018. [link]
- Nakamura Steinsson Nakamura, Emi, and J n Steinsson. "Price rigidity: Microeconomic evidence and macroeconomic implications." Annu. Rev. Econ. 5.1 (2013): 133-163. NBER WP version [pdf]
- Coibion Coibion, Olivier, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Rupal Kamdar. "The formation of expectations, inflation, and the phillips curve." Journal of Economic Literature 56.4 (2018): 1447-91. [pdf]
- Ahmed Ahmed, Shaghil, Andrew Levin, and Beth Anne Wilson. "Recent US macroeconomic stability: good policies, good practices, or good luck?." Review of economics and statistics 86.3 (2004): 824-832. [pdf]
- Orphanides Orphanides, Athanasios, and Simon van Norden. "The unreliability of output-gap estimates in real time." Review of economics and statistics 84.4 (2002): 569-583. [pdf]
- Hamilton Hamilton, James D., et al. "The equilibrium real funds rate: Past, present, and future." IMF Economic Review 64.4 (2016): 660-707. [pdf]
- Kuttner Kuttner, Kenneth, "Outside the Box: Unconventional Monetary Policy in the Great Recession and Beyond," Journal of Economic Perspectives 32(4) (Fall 2018). https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.32.4.121
- Chinn Kucko Chinn, Menzie and Kavan Kucko, "The Predictive Power of the Yield Curve across Countries and Time," International Finance (March 2015) [pdf]
- Bernanke Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist, "The Financial Accelerator and the Flight to Quality," The Review of Economics and Statistics 78(1). (Feb., 1996): 1-15. [pdf]
Optional Readings
- Favara, Giovanni, et al. "Updating the Recession Risk and the Excess Bond Premium." No. 2016-10-06, 2016.[link]
- Martin S. Eichenbaum, Sergio Rebelo and Mathias Trabandt, "The Macroeconomics of Epidemics," NBER Working Paper No. 26882 (March 2020). [link]
- Veronica Guerrieri, Guido Lorenzoni and Ludwig Straub, "Macroeconomic Implications of COVID-19: Can Negative Supply Shocks Cause Demand Shortages?" mimeo (April 2020). [link]
- Slides for Guerrieri et al. [link].
- Ma, Rogers and Zhou, "Global Economic and Financial Effects of 21st Century Pandemics and Epidemics," mimeo, March 2020. [link]
- Shan et al., "Revising down China growth forecasts as official data reflect "Black Swan" quarter," Asia in Focus, Goldman Sachs, March 17, 2020. [link]
- Goldman Sachs, Top of Mind: Roaring into Recession, March 24, 2020. [link]
- Goldman Sachs, Top of Mind: Roaring into Recession, March 24, 2020. [link]
- Torsten Slok, "Global Macro Outlook," Deustche Bank, March 5, 2020. [link]
- Journal of Economic Perspectives articles on Macroeconomics [link]
- Furman, "Extracting the Signal from the Noise: 7 Tips for Interpreting Macroeconomic Data," Milken Institute Review (2016).
- Ferrera, Lhuissier, Tripier, "Uncertainty Fluctuations: Measures, Effects and Macroeconomic Policy Challenges
," CEPII Policy Brief 20 (December 2017).
Tracking the Economy
Weblogs and Perspectives
Economics and Economic Policy Links
International Organizations
U.S. Government Agencies
Current and Historical Data
- St. Louis Fed economic database Thousands of time series on economic activity, in an easily downloadable form.
- ino.com Futures data.
- Federal Reserve Board data Monetary, financial and output data collected by the Nation's central bank.
- Bureau of Economic Analysis, Dept. of Commerce Data on GDP and components (the national income and product accounts) as well as other macroeconomic data.
- Bureau of the Census, Dept. of Commerce Data on the characteristics of the US population as well as of US firms.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dept. of Labor Data on wages, prices, productivity, and employment and unemployment rates.
- Energy Information Agency, Dept. of Energy Data on energy (electricity, gas, petroleum) production, consumption and prices.
- Economic Report of the President, various years. The back portion of
this annual publication contains about 70 tables of government economic data.
- Economic Indicators CEA and JEC Compilation of economic data in tabular form.
- NBER Data Specialized economic databases created by economists associated with the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Economics 702 Sec 002 Macroeconomics I / UW Madison / mchinn@lafollette.wisc.edu / 26 April2020