Macroeconomic Policy Lecture 1 – Graphs for 2025

Started teaching on Wednesday. Here’re some graphs in the intro lecture on macro policy (now that content is gated, and only accessible to students).

Where we are: GDP

 

Where we are: inflation

 

Where we are: Implications of the static Taylor rule

Unconventional monetary policy: Credit easing, credit tightening

Unconventional monetary policy: forward guidance

The (bivariate) Phillips curve

The dollar and the trade balance

Trade war? 10% tariffs and GDP

Trade war? 10% tariffs and inflation

Trade war: 60% China tariffs and GDP

Trade war: 60% China tariffs and inflation

Federal debt and real interest rates

 

CBO on regional temperature increase for global degree increase (3 degrees is median)

 

CBO on regional precipitation increase for global temperature increase (3 degrees is median)

CBO on regional temperature increase for global 2 foot increase (2 feet is median)

 

Syllabus is here. Textbook is Blanchard, Macroeconomics 9/e. For those who question the methodological approaches incorporated in the class (remember this rant?), see the Blanchard’s bio here:

Olivier Blanchard is the Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the C. Fred Bergsten Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. A citizen of France, Blanchard has spent most of his professional life in the United States. After obtaining his PhD in economics from MIT in 1977, he taught at Harvard University and returned to MIT in 1982. He was chair of the economics department from 1998 to 2003. In 2008, he took a leave of absence to serve as economic counsellor and director of the research department at the International Monetary Fund where he stayed until 2015. He then joined the Peterson Institute.

Blanchard has worked on a wide set of macroeconomic issues, including the role of monetary and fiscal policy, speculative bubbles, the labor market and determinants of unemployment, economic transition in former communist countries, and the nature of the Global Financial Crisis. In the process, he has worked with numerous countries and international organizations.

Blanchard is the author of many books and articles, including two textbooks on macroeconomics, one at the graduate level with Stanley Fischer and the other at the undergraduate level. He is a past editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the NBER Macroeconomics Annual and founding editor of American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. He is a fellow and former Council member of the Econometric Society, a past president of the American Economic Association, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.