ECON-6201 Macroeconomía Corto Plazo Doctorado

The fundamental objective of modern macroeconomics is to provide quantitative responses to economic questions. The decisions of the different agents involved in an economy (families, firms, unions, countries, governments, central banks) are derived from uncertainty conditions and affect the future. The first part of the course studies theories of unemployment, natural unemployment rate, dilemma between inflation and economic activity, inflation and deflation costs, target inflation schemes, currency rules, Central Bank delegation and reputation, and some topics of interest in the current economic situation, such as deflation and liquidity trap, currency and globalization policy, optimum accumulation of international reserves and costs, and benefits of currency and dollarization. The second part of the course is aimed at studying the basic elements of dynamic macroeconomics. The fundamental objective is to help students understand the theory and numeric methods needed to write simple computer programs (MATLAB) and use them in the solution of quantitative questions in macro, public finances, currency, growth, work market, etc., all within a general dynamic balance framework. We will follow the path established by the 1985 Economy Nobel Robert Lucas: " One of the theoretical economy functions is to provide people with artificial economic systems that may be used as labs, where the different policies - that would otherwise be very expensive to evaluate in the real world – could be tested at a very low cost " (Lucas, 1980, p. 696).

Credits

3

Instructor

Fernandez Andres