No comments about Principles of Macroeconomics.

No comments about Asset Prices and Monetary Policy (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report).

5 comments about Foundations of International Macroeconomics.

1. Currently I'm using this book for my class called Trade and Economic Growth I II. The nuances of microeconomic foundations found in chapters 1 to 5 are used to explain and develop the concepts studied in open economy macroeconomics and international finance; so it is recommended that you understand fully the first three chapters of this book at least to understand the rest. The authors try to explain the concepts as clear as possible; however, you have to derive for yourself the equations that appear in the text, which is a challenge for most first year graduate students who are not yet proficient in using the tools of static/dynamic optimization, etc. A reference on mathematical economics such as Chiang's "Fundamental methods of math. econ.," and "Elements of dynamic optimization," or Simon Blume's "Mathematics for economists" should be kept near at hand. Nevertheless, there are many real-world examples that help clarify matters and make the this book more readable and interesting.



2. International economics is not my field, even if I do find it interesting. As a graduate student, I liked this book a lot. It is not brilliantly written, and it is at times rather dull reading. BUT it a VERY clear and modern treatment of an important subject by two of the best scholars in the field. Overall, it's a very "user-friendly" graduate textbook. Not very entertaining, but it allows you to go through the material (much of it rather advanced) without too much pain, and without many leaps of faith (or pages of algebra) to go from one equation to the next. And there are many well developed applications which will help you see how the theory relates to the real world. There are many exercises to test your (or your students') knowledge of the field, whose solutions are also separately available.
   
   Being this a graduate textbook, reading it requires a strong technical background, so if you are simply looking for a book to deepen your knowledge of a subject that you may only know through op-ed pieces, you should probably look elsewhere (e.g. undergraduate textbooks such as Krugman and Obstfeld). But if you are looking for an advanced but approachable and modern treatment of international macro, this book would be a very good bet. Highly recommended.
   
   Here are some details about the book:
   
   The chapters
   
   1 Intertemporal Trade and the Current Account Balance
   2 Dynamics of Small Open Economies
   3 The Life Cycle, Tax Policy, and the Current Account
   4 The Real Exchange Rate and the Terms of Trade
   5 Uncertainty and International Financial Markets
   6 Imperfections in International Capital Markets
   7 Global Linkages and Economic Growth
   8 Money and Exchange Rates under Flexible Prices
   9 Nominal Price Rigidities: Empirical Facts and Basic Open-Economy Models
   10 Sticky-Price Models of Output, the Exchange Rate, and the Current Account
   
   Some examples of the applications
   
   - Energy Prices, Global Saving, and Real Interest Rates
   - The Relative Impact of Productivity Shocks on Investment and the Current Account
   - Do Government Budget Deficits Cause Current Account Deficits?
   - Feldstein and Horioka's Saving-Investment Puzzle
   - Government Debt and World Interest Rates Since 1970
   - Sectoral Productivity Differentials and the Relative Prices of Nontradables in Industrial Countries
   - Productivity Growth and Real Exchange Rates
   - International Portfolio Diversification and the Home Bias Puzzle
   - How Large Are the Gains from International Risk Sharing?
   - How Costly Is Exclusion from World Insurance Markets?
   - How Have Prior Defaults Affected Countries Borrowing Terms?
   - Can Capital Deepening Be an Engine of Sustained High Growth Rates: Evidence from Fast-Growing East Asia
   - Population Size and Growth
   - Testing for Speculative Bubbles
   - Central Bank Independence and Inflation
   - Openness and Inflation
   
   Appendix
   
   - Methods of Intertemporal Optimization
   - A Model with Intertemporally Nonadditive Preferences
   - Solving Systems of Linear Difference Equations
   - Multiperiod Portfolio Selection
   - Continuous-Time Maximization and the Maximum Principle



3. I laughed, I cried. Of course this is just an macro econ book for grad students for open econ. Builds up very gradual. But could have been written better. Don't expect any climatic love story for Autarky rates. But I enjoyed Romer's Macroecon book more, because it includes more case studies on certain theories. Since you will be reading this book for a grad class, you really have no choice, you got to buy this book, if you want to pass the prelims.



4. The book I bought had excellent quality. The delivery took 2 weeks more than estimated though.



5. I think the book is on many reading lists for completeness. Some professors put it there without ever having looked into it. It is a good book but it seems to be lost between undergrad and graduate level. It is not productive to work with the book. Consider it leisure reading.
   I really like the authors' articles.

1 comments about Presidential Economics, 3rd Edition: The Making of Economic Policy From Roosevelt to Clinton.

1. If there are any general readers left with an interest in economics, they will enjoy this accessible and informative book. I teach macroeconomics to undergraduates, and hope to find a way of using this book as an important supplement to conventional texts.

   Stein gives us a history of fiscal and monetary policy from the Depression to the first Reagan term. The third edition claims to be updated to the start of the Clinton administration, but this simply means that Stein has added a few articles he'd written for the AEI or for the Wall Street Journal. Essentially, though, the book's story ends in about 1983, with most emphasis being given to the period from 1968. (Stein was at one point chairman of Nixon's Council of Economic Advisors.)

   It sounds, then, as though "Presidential Economics" has two strikes against it. First, Stein refers to the Reagan administration in the present tense, whereas today's students are impatient with any material more than a couple of years old. It's actually one of my hidden agendas, though, to help students understand that the world hasn't always been as it is today, and that it may well change again tomorrow. Stein's book--indeed, almost any historical treatment--can be used to make this point.

   The second apparent drawback (at least, to those who share my leftish tendencies) is that Stein is a firm believer in what he calls the "old-time [conservative] religion". Yet, perhaps because he is so frankly of the right--and, of course, because he writes so well--today's typically conservative student may well find compelling Stein's arguments against Reagan's "economics of joy". The argument against (certain forms of) supply-side, or perhaps monetarist, positions might be regarded with suspicion coming from someone with progressive pretensions (like me), whereas Stein is more likely to get away with it.

   Stein's historical treatment allows the instructor to parachute in more technical material at will--the Phillips Curve, perhaps, or ye olde Keynesian Cross--either from a standard text or from the instructor's own notes. In this way the various macro models are given social, even institutional, life, and don't just follow one another as a series of abstractions (as in "if this is Chapter 17 it must be a New Classical position").

   The data series used in the text generally end in 1983, but learning how to update them would, in any case, be a useful exercise for the class. I also plan on requiring students to dig up media commentary from, say, the fifties, to compare and contrast it with Stein's narrative. Students must learn that not everything can be found on the web.

   I've been unable to find any more recent books that cover the last two, post-Stein, decades. I'd even settle for something less fluent and articulate than Stein, if only it wasn't polemic in a narrowly partisan kind of way. So far, though, I've been unable to find anything. (Does anyone have any ideas?) Thus, in putting some flesh on the bones of economic theory--even if, in doing so accessibly, it remains demanding, since economics is never, in that sense, an "easy read"--Stein's book continues to be relevant and useful, even vital.

5 comments about Macroeconomics (2nd Edition) (MyEconLab Series).

1. Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RO1UU8SLMUCDH This is one of the better textbooks I have
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2. Book was in exact condition as described, event better. Was shipped in a fast manner.



3. I am extremely pleased with the used textbook that I purchased from Amazon. It offered significant savings and I received quickly.



4. This book states that it has myeconlab series, but when I bought it, it wasn't included. :( yet i cost me another 30 bucks for the access code...I'm so regret buying this book!



5. This product, though it says myeconlab series, does not come with the access code, so add 40 dollars if you require the access code! misleading item title.

1 comments about Business Cycles and Equilibrium.

1. In these essays, Fischer Black reaches provocative conclusions concerning the role of equilibrium in a developed economy.
   
   Black, who published this volume while a Goldman Sachs partner, was attracted to the study of economics and finance by the concept of equilibrium. His studies lead to essays on central banking, monetary policy and foreign banking. His conclusion: there is little a central banker can do to effect conditions. These are surprising conclusions from someone who spent time on the faculty at the University of Chicago with Milton Friedman.
   
   To me, the most interesting essays deal with the role of noise. Black argues that speculative prices contain "noise," created by those who trade on mistaken perceptions. He concludes that the prices of goods and services also contain noise introduced by the investment decisions of those acting irrationally. This results in wider fluctuations than might otherwise result.
   
   Although widely viewed as a quant, Fischer's essays are largely verbal. He says he believes mathematical models limit the creative process, locking the modelers into specific lines of thought.
   
   Fischer's surprising conclusions support his verbal reliance. Whether he is right or wrong, his work is always stimulating.

3 comments about Continuous-Time Finance (Macroeconomics and Finance).

1. I think the Nobel Prize was not enough to thank Professor Merton for his thought. The absolute and necessary book to approach continuous time Finance.



2. This book is a collection of thier(most of the parts are Merton's) papers written during the past 25 years. The papers are little bit changed so as to be cross-referenced through the book. Also You can find some comments in the book for the recent literatures. As you know, Dr. Merton introduced continuous-time approaches into the finance. This book deals with basic mathematics for the continuous time finance, portfolio selection, option pricing, and theory of intertemporal equilibrium. The value of this book is greater than that of papers copied separately in the library. Also it is a great pleasure to see how his theory has been evolved through the book.



3. Merton's book presents the continuous time generalization of existing finance theory.A good representative section ,demonstrating his technique throughout the book,is contained in his generalization of the Tobin-Markowitz mean -variance approach using the log normal distribution to artificilly minimize the presence of outliers(pp.131-136).Throughout the book Merton uses the word " uncertainty " when he should be using the word " risk ".The entire book is based on the assumption that the central limit theorem holds so that one does not need to consider any other possible distribution shape except the normal because the distribution of the sample means will always be normally distributed for large samples taken from any other shaped distribution.However,this requires that the sample space be composed entirely of continuous and independent observations.The purpose of goodness of fit tests is to establish that the assumptions of the central limit theorem do,in fact ,hold.Nowhere in this book is a single goodness of fit test mentioned or reported.In fact,there is no discussion of any of the existing types of goodness of fit tests at all.Benoit Mandelbrot has demonstrated for about 50 years that the time series data on price changes in financial markets world wide is NOT continuous(they are discrete , bunched,and change in data jumps )and NOT independent(they are dependent-moreover, the time sequence of the events is extremely important).Mandelbrot's critique is thus a much more advanced form of the initial objections raised by J M Keynes to Jan Tinbergen's 1937-38 use of least squares to predict changes in investment spending over time, based primarily on Tinbergen's use of a lagged expectations variable,that appeared in the Economic Journal of 1939-40.Keynes asked Tinbergen to show that his time series data was "...uniform,stable,and homogeneous through time." Tinbergen never demonstrated this at any time in his life .How does Merton deal with the fact that the normal distribution does not come close to approximating the time series data in financial markets ? His response is to cite Paul Cootner's reply made to Mandelbrot in 1963 : " Moreover,as discussed by Cootner...the infinite variance property of the non-Gaussian stable distributions implies that most(all? -author's insert) of our statistical tools ,which are based upon finite moment assumptions(e.g.least squares),are useless.It also implies that even the first moment ,or expected value of the arithmetic price change,does not exist."(p.59).Merton concedes that the L(Levy) stable distributions Mandelbrot has studied fit the actual tail values of the time series data better than the Gaussian does.
   The conclusion that I have arrived at in this review is that Merton's techniques are valuable IF the data is continuous,independent,and path independent.On the other hand,Mandelbrot's approach is to be preferred if the time series data is discontinuous,dependent,and path dependent.Merton's approach implies that the private financial markets of the world are stable and convergent over time to a rational expectations equilibrium.The decision maker faces " mild " risk that can be insured against by the holding of various options and derivatives.Mandelbrot's approach implies that the world's private financial markets are unstable and do not converge to a rational expectations equilibrium.The decision maker faces " wild " risk that can't be insured against.

3 comments about The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Microeconomic Approach to Development Policy (World Bank).

1. This is an excelent manual for anyone interested in studying consumption or welfare in developing countries. Profesor Deaton is certainly one of the experts in the field. His book is well written and flows easily from theory to practice. Really enjoy it !



2. It is a great book, and I would have not canceled the order if you would have shipped as your website said it would.



3. This book is a masterpiece. In practice, it deserves to become the "Holy Bible" of Microeconometrics applied to (but not only to) Development Economics. It is beautifully written by an amazingly knowledgeble economist, who has actually worked for years (and still does) on most of the issues this book deals with. It is no easy reading, and it would be worth spending a day for every single page, but it's excellent even if you don't want to go through the details, and you just need an intuition about the issues covered. The first chapter introduces the reader to many important aspects of the contruction and use of household surveys. The second chapter masterfully reviews many concepts of applied econometrics. Chapter 3 is about poverty and inequality measurement. Chapter 4 is about "Nutrition, children, and intrahousehold allocation", Chapter 5 deals with prices and tax reforms, and Chapter 6 with saving and consumption smoothing. The book also contains many useful Stata codes the author wrote and used for his many papers. Again, this is not a trivial reading, but if you are interested in applied economics you will find reading this book extremely rewarding, and often almost entertaining, because Deaton is one of the very few economists around able to write about technical stuff in a brilliant and intuitive way.

5 comments about Economic Development.

1. The greatest problem facing economists today (I should say "facing the world today") is how to create wealth in the poorest countries of the world. This introduction to the subject is accessible to any reader, even those with very limited previous knowledge of economics. The book begins with a critical summary of current development theories and then takes on a number of policy questions, with case studies. Each chapter ends with discussion questions and the publisher maintains a web site with useful quantitative and graphing exercises (with answers).

   Michael Todaro writes from a left-of-center perspective and is more ideological than most textbook writers. However, he presents other points of view and presents them pretty fairly in my opinion. And I have to say that he scores some pretty big points against the neoclassical theorists by showing that their assumptions are frequently at odds with reality.

   While some of Todaro's more stridently ideological statements can be annoying, I know of no other book that provides such a comprehensive, well organized, and engagingly written introduction to economic development.




2. Todaro and Smith cover the major issues and influences of poverty in the third world, as we know it today.

   With development having many different meanings and underdevelopment been a concept that many theories, especially economic ones, ignore, this book is exceptional in its analysis of the third world and the need for development, both economically and socially; the role of women and children in poverty is raised and discussed, as the important issue that it is, .... and more than often is ignored AND possible solutions to underdevelopment are suggested.

   Additionally, much emphasis is placed on specific country examples, which are extremely interesting and useful from a study point of view, and Todaro and Smith further the cause for underdevelopment issues with their key characteristics of development.

   An excellent resource for students, or anyone else, interested in development issues ..... 5+++.




3. While Michael Todaro's text is widely used, as another reviewer points out, it is as much political "science" and sociology as economics. I am an economics professor and I have taught Economic Development courses from this text and had to repeatedly bring the perspective of neo-classical economics which was lacking or misconstrued. This text is closer to neo-Marxist than neo-classical.

   If you wish to gain the insights of economics, I would recommend "The Elusive Quest for Growth : Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics" by William Easterly.




4. I was horrified to see how much this book cost when I started my Development Economics course. Now I'm very glad I bought it.
   
   The writing is very good: it's dense, clear, and accurate. It clearly presents the economic models of the most referenced development economists. It places them in context and critiques them.
   
   I was so pleased with this book (and the subject) that I went on to pursue an MA with a focus on development economics. Textbooks that can change your life are few--this ranks among them.



5. This book talks about many issues on economic development, and it also includes alternative approaches. You do not have to be a economics major to understand that book.

1 comments about Macroeconomics.

1. This book was in like new condition. Seller was quick to e-mail confirmation of shipping.We chose standard shipping and just as an FYI it took about 2 1/2 weeks to arrive.