For readings, please refer to my lecture notes on macroeconomics, and to Mankiw’s chapter on the natural rate of unemployment. For extra-credit questions, you may have to do further research or readings.
Please answer the following questions, and submit your answers by email by March 2, 2016.
- What is the most important difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics?
- Explain Say’s Law. Why is it important for an understanding of macroeconomics?
- How does Mankiw define the natural rate of unemployment?
- According to Mankiw, what are the four reasons why the natural rate of unemployment is not zero? Are these reasons important in the context of the Philippine economy?
- It is said that macroeconomics is essentially the economics of unemployment and inflation. Why, in your opinion (based on your readings or research), do policy-makers not aim for zero unemployment and zero inflation?
- Extra credit: What is the Okun Index of Misery? Can it be improved by including a poverty index?
- Even more extra credit: Construct an Okun Misery Index for the Philippine economy. How far back in time could you go? (Hint: data may be available in the websites of BSP and IMF.) Is it affected by the prevailing economic policies of various Presidents? (Anyone – even a group of up to three – answering this question well will be exempted from taking a final exam.)
- Extra credit: Explain in your own words the Neoclassical Synthesis (this is from previous studies in EC 12, History of Economic Thought).
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