- •About the author
- •Brief Contents
- •Contents
- •Preface
- •This Book’s Approach
- •What’s New in the Seventh Edition?
- •The Arrangement of Topics
- •Part One, Introduction
- •Part Two, Classical Theory: The Economy in the Long Run
- •Part Three, Growth Theory: The Economy in the Very Long Run
- •Part Four, Business Cycle Theory: The Economy in the Short Run
- •Part Five, Macroeconomic Policy Debates
- •Part Six, More on the Microeconomics Behind Macroeconomics
- •Epilogue
- •Alternative Routes Through the Text
- •Learning Tools
- •Case Studies
- •FYI Boxes
- •Graphs
- •Mathematical Notes
- •Chapter Summaries
- •Key Concepts
- •Questions for Review
- •Problems and Applications
- •Chapter Appendices
- •Glossary
- •Translations
- •Acknowledgments
- •Supplements and Media
- •For Instructors
- •Instructor’s Resources
- •Solutions Manual
- •Test Bank
- •PowerPoint Slides
- •For Students
- •Student Guide and Workbook
- •Online Offerings
- •EconPortal, Available Spring 2010
- •eBook
- •WebCT
- •BlackBoard
- •Additional Offerings
- •i-clicker
- •The Wall Street Journal Edition
- •Financial Times Edition
- •Dismal Scientist
- •1-1: What Macroeconomists Study
- •1-2: How Economists Think
- •Theory as Model Building
- •The Use of Multiple Models
- •Prices: Flexible Versus Sticky
- •Microeconomic Thinking and Macroeconomic Models
- •1-3: How This Book Proceeds
- •Income, Expenditure, and the Circular Flow
- •Rules for Computing GDP
- •Real GDP Versus Nominal GDP
- •The GDP Deflator
- •Chain-Weighted Measures of Real GDP
- •The Components of Expenditure
- •Other Measures of Income
- •Seasonal Adjustment
- •The Price of a Basket of Goods
- •The CPI Versus the GDP Deflator
- •The Household Survey
- •The Establishment Survey
- •The Factors of Production
- •The Production Function
- •The Supply of Goods and Services
- •3-2: How Is National Income Distributed to the Factors of Production?
- •Factor Prices
- •The Decisions Facing the Competitive Firm
- •The Firm’s Demand for Factors
- •The Division of National Income
- •The Cobb–Douglas Production Function
- •Consumption
- •Investment
- •Government Purchases
- •Changes in Saving: The Effects of Fiscal Policy
- •Changes in Investment Demand
- •3-5: Conclusion
- •4-1: What Is Money?
- •The Functions of Money
- •The Types of Money
- •The Development of Fiat Money
- •How the Quantity of Money Is Controlled
- •How the Quantity of Money Is Measured
- •4-2: The Quantity Theory of Money
- •Transactions and the Quantity Equation
- •From Transactions to Income
- •The Assumption of Constant Velocity
- •Money, Prices, and Inflation
- •4-4: Inflation and Interest Rates
- •Two Interest Rates: Real and Nominal
- •The Fisher Effect
- •Two Real Interest Rates: Ex Ante and Ex Post
- •The Cost of Holding Money
- •Future Money and Current Prices
- •4-6: The Social Costs of Inflation
- •The Layman’s View and the Classical Response
- •The Costs of Expected Inflation
- •The Costs of Unexpected Inflation
- •One Benefit of Inflation
- •4-7: Hyperinflation
- •The Costs of Hyperinflation
- •The Causes of Hyperinflation
- •4-8: Conclusion: The Classical Dichotomy
- •The Role of Net Exports
- •International Capital Flows and the Trade Balance
- •International Flows of Goods and Capital: An Example
- •Capital Mobility and the World Interest Rate
- •Why Assume a Small Open Economy?
- •The Model
- •How Policies Influence the Trade Balance
- •Evaluating Economic Policy
- •Nominal and Real Exchange Rates
- •The Real Exchange Rate and the Trade Balance
- •The Determinants of the Real Exchange Rate
- •How Policies Influence the Real Exchange Rate
- •The Effects of Trade Policies
- •The Special Case of Purchasing-Power Parity
- •Net Capital Outflow
- •The Model
- •Policies in the Large Open Economy
- •Conclusion
- •Causes of Frictional Unemployment
- •Public Policy and Frictional Unemployment
- •Minimum-Wage Laws
- •Unions and Collective Bargaining
- •Efficiency Wages
- •The Duration of Unemployment
- •Trends in Unemployment
- •Transitions Into and Out of the Labor Force
- •6-5: Labor-Market Experience: Europe
- •The Rise in European Unemployment
- •Unemployment Variation Within Europe
- •The Rise of European Leisure
- •6-6: Conclusion
- •7-1: The Accumulation of Capital
- •The Supply and Demand for Goods
- •Growth in the Capital Stock and the Steady State
- •Approaching the Steady State: A Numerical Example
- •How Saving Affects Growth
- •7-2: The Golden Rule Level of Capital
- •Comparing Steady States
- •The Transition to the Golden Rule Steady State
- •7-3: Population Growth
- •The Steady State With Population Growth
- •The Effects of Population Growth
- •Alternative Perspectives on Population Growth
- •7-4: Conclusion
- •The Efficiency of Labor
- •The Steady State With Technological Progress
- •The Effects of Technological Progress
- •Balanced Growth
- •Convergence
- •Factor Accumulation Versus Production Efficiency
- •8-3: Policies to Promote Growth
- •Evaluating the Rate of Saving
- •Changing the Rate of Saving
- •Allocating the Economy’s Investment
- •Establishing the Right Institutions
- •Encouraging Technological Progress
- •The Basic Model
- •A Two-Sector Model
- •The Microeconomics of Research and Development
- •The Process of Creative Destruction
- •8-5: Conclusion
- •Increases in the Factors of Production
- •Technological Progress
- •The Sources of Growth in the United States
- •The Solow Residual in the Short Run
- •9-1: The Facts About the Business Cycle
- •GDP and Its Components
- •Unemployment and Okun’s Law
- •Leading Economic Indicators
- •9-2: Time Horizons in Macroeconomics
- •How the Short Run and Long Run Differ
- •9-3: Aggregate Demand
- •The Quantity Equation as Aggregate Demand
- •Why the Aggregate Demand Curve Slopes Downward
- •Shifts in the Aggregate Demand Curve
- •9-4: Aggregate Supply
- •The Long Run: The Vertical Aggregate Supply Curve
- •From the Short Run to the Long Run
- •9-5: Stabilization Policy
- •Shocks to Aggregate Demand
- •Shocks to Aggregate Supply
- •10-1: The Goods Market and the IS Curve
- •The Keynesian Cross
- •The Interest Rate, Investment, and the IS Curve
- •How Fiscal Policy Shifts the IS Curve
- •10-2: The Money Market and the LM Curve
- •The Theory of Liquidity Preference
- •Income, Money Demand, and the LM Curve
- •How Monetary Policy Shifts the LM Curve
- •Shocks in the IS–LM Model
- •From the IS–LM Model to the Aggregate Demand Curve
- •The IS–LM Model in the Short Run and Long Run
- •11-3: The Great Depression
- •The Spending Hypothesis: Shocks to the IS Curve
- •The Money Hypothesis: A Shock to the LM Curve
- •Could the Depression Happen Again?
- •11-4: Conclusion
- •12-1: The Mundell–Fleming Model
- •The Goods Market and the IS* Curve
- •The Money Market and the LM* Curve
- •Putting the Pieces Together
- •Fiscal Policy
- •Monetary Policy
- •Trade Policy
- •How a Fixed-Exchange-Rate System Works
- •Fiscal Policy
- •Monetary Policy
- •Trade Policy
- •Policy in the Mundell–Fleming Model: A Summary
- •12-4: Interest Rate Differentials
- •Country Risk and Exchange-Rate Expectations
- •Differentials in the Mundell–Fleming Model
- •Pros and Cons of Different Exchange-Rate Systems
- •The Impossible Trinity
- •12-6: From the Short Run to the Long Run: The Mundell–Fleming Model With a Changing Price Level
- •12-7: A Concluding Reminder
- •Fiscal Policy
- •Monetary Policy
- •A Rule of Thumb
- •The Sticky-Price Model
- •Implications
- •Adaptive Expectations and Inflation Inertia
- •Two Causes of Rising and Falling Inflation
- •Disinflation and the Sacrifice Ratio
- •13-3: Conclusion
- •14-1: Elements of the Model
- •Output: The Demand for Goods and Services
- •The Real Interest Rate: The Fisher Equation
- •Inflation: The Phillips Curve
- •Expected Inflation: Adaptive Expectations
- •The Nominal Interest Rate: The Monetary-Policy Rule
- •14-2: Solving the Model
- •The Long-Run Equilibrium
- •The Dynamic Aggregate Supply Curve
- •The Dynamic Aggregate Demand Curve
- •The Short-Run Equilibrium
- •14-3: Using the Model
- •Long-Run Growth
- •A Shock to Aggregate Supply
- •A Shock to Aggregate Demand
- •A Shift in Monetary Policy
- •The Taylor Principle
- •14-5: Conclusion: Toward DSGE Models
- •15-1: Should Policy Be Active or Passive?
- •Lags in the Implementation and Effects of Policies
- •The Difficult Job of Economic Forecasting
- •Ignorance, Expectations, and the Lucas Critique
- •The Historical Record
- •Distrust of Policymakers and the Political Process
- •The Time Inconsistency of Discretionary Policy
- •Rules for Monetary Policy
- •16-1: The Size of the Government Debt
- •16-2: Problems in Measurement
- •Measurement Problem 1: Inflation
- •Measurement Problem 2: Capital Assets
- •Measurement Problem 3: Uncounted Liabilities
- •Measurement Problem 4: The Business Cycle
- •Summing Up
- •The Basic Logic of Ricardian Equivalence
- •Consumers and Future Taxes
- •Making a Choice
- •16-5: Other Perspectives on Government Debt
- •Balanced Budgets Versus Optimal Fiscal Policy
- •Fiscal Effects on Monetary Policy
- •Debt and the Political Process
- •International Dimensions
- •16-6: Conclusion
- •Keynes’s Conjectures
- •The Early Empirical Successes
- •The Intertemporal Budget Constraint
- •Consumer Preferences
- •Optimization
- •How Changes in Income Affect Consumption
- •Constraints on Borrowing
- •The Hypothesis
- •Implications
- •The Hypothesis
- •Implications
- •The Hypothesis
- •Implications
- •17-7: Conclusion
- •18-1: Business Fixed Investment
- •The Rental Price of Capital
- •The Cost of Capital
- •The Determinants of Investment
- •Taxes and Investment
- •The Stock Market and Tobin’s q
- •Financing Constraints
- •Banking Crises and Credit Crunches
- •18-2: Residential Investment
- •The Stock Equilibrium and the Flow Supply
- •Changes in Housing Demand
- •18-3: Inventory Investment
- •Reasons for Holding Inventories
- •18-4: Conclusion
- •19-1: Money Supply
- •100-Percent-Reserve Banking
- •Fractional-Reserve Banking
- •A Model of the Money Supply
- •The Three Instruments of Monetary Policy
- •Bank Capital, Leverage, and Capital Requirements
- •19-2: Money Demand
- •Portfolio Theories of Money Demand
- •Transactions Theories of Money Demand
- •The Baumol–Tobin Model of Cash Management
- •19-3 Conclusion
- •Lesson 2: In the short run, aggregate demand influences the amount of goods and services that a country produces.
- •Question 1: How should policymakers try to promote growth in the economy’s natural level of output?
- •Question 2: Should policymakers try to stabilize the economy?
- •Question 3: How costly is inflation, and how costly is reducing inflation?
- •Question 4: How big a problem are government budget deficits?
- •Conclusion
- •Glossary
- •Index
C H A P T E R 1 8 Investment | 539
potentially profitable investment projects. Such an increase in financing constraints is sometimes called a credit crunch.
We can use the IS–LM model to interpret the short-run effects of a credit crunch. When some would-be investors are denied credit, the demand for investment goods falls at every interest rate. The result is a contractionary shift in the IS curve. This reduces aggregate demand, production, and employment.
The long-run effects of a credit crunch are best understood from the perspective of growth theory, with its emphasis on capital accumulation as a source of growth. When a credit crunch prevents some firms from investing, the financial markets fail to allocate national saving to its best use. Less productive investment projects may take the place of more productive projects, reducing the economy’s potential for producing goods and services.
Because of these effects, policymakers at the Fed and other parts of government are always trying to monitor the health of the nation’s banking system. Their goal is to avert banking crises and credit crunches and, when they do occur, to respond quickly to minimize the resulting disruption to the economy.
That job is not easy, as the financial crisis and economic downturn of 2008–2009 illustrates. In this case, as we discussed in Chapter 11, many banks had made large bets on the housing markets through their purchases of mortgage-backed securities. When those bets turned bad, many banks found themselves insolvent or nearly so, and bank loans became hard to come by. Bank regulators at the Federal Reserve and other government agencies, like many of the bankers themselves, were caught off guard by the magnitude of the losses and the resulting precariousness of the banking system. What kind of regulatory changes will be needed to try to reduce the likelihood of future banking crises remains a topic of active debate.
18-2 Residential Investment
In this section we consider the determinants of residential investment. We begin by presenting a simple model of the housing market. Residential investment includes the purchase of new housing both by people who plan to live in it themselves and by landlords who plan to rent it to others. To keep things simple, however, it is useful to imagine that all housing is owner-occupied.
The Stock Equilibrium and the Flow Supply
There are two parts to the model. First, the market for the existing stock of houses determines the equilibrium housing price. Second, the housing price determines the flow of residential investment.
Panel (a) of Figure 18-5 shows how the relative price of housing PH/P is determined by the supply and demand for the existing stock of houses. At any point in time, the supply of houses is fixed. We represent this stock with a vertical supply curve. The demand curve for houses slopes downward, because high prices cause people to live in smaller houses, to share residences, or sometimes even to become homeless. The price of housing adjusts to equilibrate supply and demand.
540 | P A R T V I More on the Microeconomics Behind Macroeconomics
FIGURE 18-5
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(a) The Market for Housing |
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(b) The Supply of New Housing |
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Demand
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The Determination of Residential Investment The relative price of housing adjusts to equilibrate supply and demand for the existing stock of housing capital. The relative price then determines residential investment, the flow of new housing that construction firms build.
Panel (b) of Figure 18-5 shows how the relative price of housing determines the supply of new houses. Construction firms buy materials and hire labor to build houses and then sell the houses at the market price. Their costs depend on the overall price level P (which reflects the cost of wood, bricks, plaster, etc.), and their revenue depends on the price of houses PH. The higher the relative price of housing, the greater the incentive to build houses and the more houses are built. The flow of new houses—residential investment—therefore depends on the equilibrium price set in the market for existing houses.
This model of residential investment is similar to the q theory of business fixed investment. According to the q theory, business fixed investment depends on the market price of installed capital relative to its replacement cost; this relative price, in turn, depends on the expected profits from owning installed capital. According to this model of the housing market, residential investment depends on the relative price of housing. The relative price of housing, in turn, depends on the demand for housing, which depends on the imputed rent that individuals expect to receive from their housing. Hence, the relative price of housing plays much the same role for residential investment as Tobin’s q does for business fixed investment.
Changes in Housing Demand
When the demand for housing shifts, the equilibrium price of housing changes, and this change in turn affects residential investment. The demand curve for housing can shift for various reasons. An economic boom raises national income and therefore the demand for housing. A large increase in the population, perhaps because of immigration, also raises the demand for housing. Panel (a) of Figure 18-6 shows that an expansionary shift in demand raises the equilibrium
C H A P T E R 1 8 Investment | 541
FIGURE 18-6
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(a) The Market for Housing |
(b) The Supply of New Housing |
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price of |
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investment, IH |
An Increase in Housing Demand An increase in housing demand, perhaps attributable to a fall in the interest rate, raises housing prices and residential investment.
price. Panel (b) shows that the increase in the housing price increases residential investment.
One important determinant of housing demand is the real interest rate. Many people take out loans—mortgages—to buy their homes; the interest rate is the cost of the loan. Even the few people who do not have to borrow to purchase a home will respond to the interest rate, because the interest rate is the opportunity cost of holding their wealth in housing rather than putting it in a bank. A reduction in the interest rate therefore raises housing demand, housing prices, and residential investment.
Another important determinant of housing demand is credit availability. When it is easy to get a loan, more households buy their own homes, and they buy larger ones than they otherwise might, thus increasing the demand for housing. When credit conditions become tight, fewer people buy their own homes or trade up to larger ones, and the demand for housing falls.
An example of this phenomenon occurred during the first decade of the 2000s. Early in this decade, interest rates were low, and mortgages were easy to come by. Many households with questionable credit histories—called subprime borrowers—were able to get mortgages with small down payments. Not surprisingly, the housing market boomed. Housing prices rose, and residential investment was strong. A few years later, however, it became clear that the situation had gotten out of hand, as many of these subprime borrowers could not keep up with their mortgage payments. When interest rates rose and credit conditions tightened, housing demand and housing prices started to fall. Figure 18-7 illustrates the movement of housing prices and housing starts during this period. When the housing market turned down in 2007 and 2008, the result was a significant downturn in the overall economy, which is discussed in a Case Study in Chapter 11.
542 | P A R T V I More on the Microeconomics Behind Macroeconomics
FIGURE 18-7
(a) Housing Prices from 2000 to 2008
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of 2000 set to 100) |
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(b) Housing Starts from 2000 to 2008
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The Housing Market from 2000 to 2008 The first decade of the 2000s began with a boom in the housing market, followed by a bust. Panel (a) shows an index of housing prices. Panel (b) shows housing starts—the number of new houses on which builders begin construction.
Source: House prices are the seasonally adjusted S&P/Case–Shiller nationwide index, adjusted for inflation using the GDP deflator. Housing starts are from the U.S. Department of Commerce.