All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Economics: It's not just whats' in your wallet

Macroeconomic Measurement

"Incumbent parties almost always keep the White House if inflation is moderate and the unemployment rate is falling in the year leading up to the election."

Questions of the Day

Outline: Guide to the Macro Markets: An Overview 

• Labor Market (Unemployment rate, employment, wages)
• Output Market (GDP, CPI, inflation)
• Capital Market (Money supply, credit, interest rates)
• Foreign Exchange Market (Current & capital accounts, exchange rates)

Where you can get the data

Abstract

Macroeconomics is based on the premises that we can measure the performance of the macroeconomy and that the government has certain policy tools that are linked to these macroeconomy performance measures.  In this unit we will examine closely the measures used to capture activity in the four macro markets - output, labor, capital, and foreign exchange.  In each market you can expect to see measures of both price and quantity - the two axes of the S-D model of markets you used in microeconomics.  For example, here we will talk about measures such as GDP, the quantity measure of the output market, and interest rates, a measure of price in the capital market.  In each case we will examine how the measures are constructed and discuss some of the limitations of the measures.   

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