Macroeconomics: Selected Readings

This book was great for anyone trying to get a basic grasp of macro econ without going into calculus.

Barro's text has been unfairly criticized as not being mathematically rigorous enough. However, it has established itself as the standard text at all of America's top colleges - Harvard, Chicago, MIT, et al. - by relying on non-proprietary, supplementary, calculus driven texts written specifically to dovetail to its lucid and primarily social scientific, algebraic presentation. An excellent complement in this vein (and free!), is `Macroecomics' by Matthias Doepke, Andreas Lehnert, and Andrew Sellgren (often abbreviated DLS), developed during Doepke's and Lehnert's doctoral studies at Chicago. A mere google search of their names will turn up copies of the text. When assigned in connection with Barro throughout, its provides a mathematically rigorous, foundationally micro driven, market clearing presentation of modern macroeconomic theory for students whose have a solid grasp of differential calculus. The text would also seem to work well for individuals who want to largely avoid calculus while gaining a deeper understanding of macro theory beyond the introductory level.

I love this book. Barro's macroeconomics is specific and makes sense about the phenomenon of today's society.

If you are an economics major and you do not know this book, buy it and read it. The market-clearing approach is the approach. Strong microfoundations, rational agents and a dynamic setting. And it is presented in an intuitive, elegant, and clear way with the aid of ingenious diagrams. It is one of those pieces that are introductory and advanced at the same time. It is rather unfortunate that most undergraduate textbooks do not follow the modern approach. Even worst, they do not teach thinks like the labor/consumption choice, savings and capital accumulation, Lucas island's model, public debt sustainability, current account as an intertemporal phenomenon, etc. Once you learn this approach well, macroeconomics will no longer be a headache for you and you will be ready to master more advanced materials. The only major shortcoming in Barro's book is that, despite it is in the 5th edition now, it has scarcely changed. Other have unsuccessfully tried to do this (Krugman, Farmer, and Sachs-Larrain). By the way, there is now in the market another book that heavily relies on the same approach and is a just a little bit more advanced and extends the approach to a few more topics(bank runs, for instance): Stephen Williamson's Macroeconomics. If you are an undergraduate, you shall have both Barro's and Williamson's books. You will not regret it if you later find yourself in graduate shcool. Finally, I agree with a former reviewer that an intermediate, more matemathically oriented, presentation of the approach is urgently needed. Fortunately, I do not really need it, but I feel confident that it will not take long for somebody to come up with a more technical presentation. However, after Barro's exposition, I wonder if one really needs the mathematical intrications. That is actually the beauty of the book.

I really enjoyed studying intermediate macroeconomics by reading this book. Maybe one additional reason why I enjoyed reading it was that Sala-i-Martin was my profesor, who personally knows Barro (they together wrote "Economic Growth"which I can also highly recommend).