What do you think?
Rate this book
Big Ideas in Macroeconomics: A Nontechnical View
An accessible description of modern macroeconomics, and a defense of its policy relevance. Macroeconomists have been caricatured either as credulous savants in love with the beauty of their mathematical models or as free-market fundamentalists who admit no doubt as to the market's wisdom. In this book, Kartik Athreya draws a truer picture, offering a nontechnical description of prominent ideas and models in macroeconomics, and arguing for their value as interpretive tools as well as their policy relevance. Athreya deliberately leaves out the technical machinery, providing an essential guide to the sometimes abstract ideas that drive macroeconomists' research and practical policy advice. Athreya describes the main approach to macroeconomic model construction, the foundational Walrasian general-equilibrium framework, and its modern version, the Arrow-Debreu-McKenzie (ADM) model. In the heart of the book, Athreya shows how the Walrasian approach shapes and unifies much of modern macroeconomics. He details models central to ongoing macroeconomic the neoclassical and stochastic growth models, the standard incomplete-markets model, the overlapping-generations model, and the standard search model. Athreya's accessible primer traces the links between the views and policy advice of modern macroeconomists and their shared theoretical approach.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
14 people are currently reading
122 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 27, 2016
Excellent.
I wish I had read this during my second year in graduate school, after taking the "core" Ph.D. curriculum. Kartik Athreya ties the important results in microeconomic theory (particularly regarding Walrasian equilibrium) to the setups of workhorse macroeconomic models.
Both the book's title and subtitle might mislead you. First, "big ideas" doesn't mean important contributions of macroeconomics. This book is not about the sausage, but about how the sausage is made. Second, the nature of the subject is incompatible with the book's subtitle. With "nontechnical" what the author means is "there's no math." But the subject is deeply technical. It couldn't be any other way, as he writes about macroeconomic modelling, which is always done with math. I do admire, however, the author's great skill in walking the reader through all the important theorems of the macroeconomic plumbing without a single equation.
With Athreya you're in the hands of an orthodox economist, one who defends vigorously the role of math in economic research, and the standard simplifications and assumptions of workhorse macro models. But he's also aware of, even sympathetic toward, the limitations of our stylized models. This is something I didn't see often enough in the classroom.
In this book, however, every debate about standard macro practice is won by the neoclassical orthodoxy. Standard methodology either "makes sense," or "it's the least-bad alternative," or "it's the only way we can make progress."
The simplifications of economic models achieve two goals: (1) they save the public from economists, who otherwise would be able to explain anything, or prescribe any policy they chose; (2) allow economists to achieve greater relevance in other parts of the model (models can't be rich and complex everywhere, as they would become impossible to analyze). Although I'm in Athreya's camp, I wish he had made a stronger case for non-neoclassical approaches (limited rationality, non-rational expectations, Keynesian economics, etc.)
Who is this book for? Economists, I think. Very few people without graduate-level education in economics will finish it because, as I said, despite the absence of math it is a technical book. Athreya seems to think otherwise. Towards the end of chapter 5, after 300 pages of demanding discussions on material that only economists would find of interest, the author explains, in plain English, what the prisoner's dilemma is. I doubt anybody in the remaining audience needed to be told.
I will keep a copy of this book at hand, for two reasons. First, because I want to savor and ponder again many of Athreya's discussions. His points can be really deep (although only of interest to an economist). Second, because the list of references is impressive. Athreya is a well-read economist. Time and again I felt compelled to read the numerous books and articles he references.
For a more thoughtful review, read Noah Smith's blog post: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/big-ideas-in-macroeconomics-book-review_8748.html
I wish I had read this during my second year in graduate school, after taking the "core" Ph.D. curriculum. Kartik Athreya ties the important results in microeconomic theory (particularly regarding Walrasian equilibrium) to the setups of workhorse macroeconomic models.
Both the book's title and subtitle might mislead you. First, "big ideas" doesn't mean important contributions of macroeconomics. This book is not about the sausage, but about how the sausage is made. Second, the nature of the subject is incompatible with the book's subtitle. With "nontechnical" what the author means is "there's no math." But the subject is deeply technical. It couldn't be any other way, as he writes about macroeconomic modelling, which is always done with math. I do admire, however, the author's great skill in walking the reader through all the important theorems of the macroeconomic plumbing without a single equation.
With Athreya you're in the hands of an orthodox economist, one who defends vigorously the role of math in economic research, and the standard simplifications and assumptions of workhorse macro models. But he's also aware of, even sympathetic toward, the limitations of our stylized models. This is something I didn't see often enough in the classroom.
In this book, however, every debate about standard macro practice is won by the neoclassical orthodoxy. Standard methodology either "makes sense," or "it's the least-bad alternative," or "it's the only way we can make progress."
The simplifications of economic models achieve two goals: (1) they save the public from economists, who otherwise would be able to explain anything, or prescribe any policy they chose; (2) allow economists to achieve greater relevance in other parts of the model (models can't be rich and complex everywhere, as they would become impossible to analyze). Although I'm in Athreya's camp, I wish he had made a stronger case for non-neoclassical approaches (limited rationality, non-rational expectations, Keynesian economics, etc.)
Who is this book for? Economists, I think. Very few people without graduate-level education in economics will finish it because, as I said, despite the absence of math it is a technical book. Athreya seems to think otherwise. Towards the end of chapter 5, after 300 pages of demanding discussions on material that only economists would find of interest, the author explains, in plain English, what the prisoner's dilemma is. I doubt anybody in the remaining audience needed to be told.
I will keep a copy of this book at hand, for two reasons. First, because I want to savor and ponder again many of Athreya's discussions. His points can be really deep (although only of interest to an economist). Second, because the list of references is impressive. Athreya is a well-read economist. Time and again I felt compelled to read the numerous books and articles he references.
For a more thoughtful review, read Noah Smith's blog post: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/big-ideas-in-macroeconomics-book-review_8748.html
November 16, 2023
A somewhat idiosyncratic five star rating: The book gave an excellent overview over the landscape of mainstream macroeconomic models and the ideas connecting and pulling them together - given my individual background of some basic economics, game theory, econometrics, and mathematics. So while it indeed is non-technical (thus allowing quick progress on the conceptual level, without having to work out examples in detail), it provides enough hints to allow imagining the underlying theory, and references for digging in deeper.
January 2, 2022
good book on what macro is REALLY like
August 10, 2017
As the author says in the closing paragraphs, this book aligns closely with the first year of graduate studies in economics. It served nicely as tangential reading during my rare non-busy lunches and worked well being stretched out over a year. Kartik is very well read and the one thing that would really be nice is a list at the end of each chapter or at the end of the book of topics that are listed in the book and the references that supplied for each topic in the text.
February 25, 2016
Apparently, "nontechnical" means "without equations and graphs". Unfortunately, topics Athreya is writing about are very hard to express in words alone. That is why book is quite boring and hard to read. The book can be useful for students as a complement to more technical texts, but not for general public.
Read
August 8, 2014339 A871 2014
December 14, 2016
Really struggled to finish it. Not for the lazy.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews