14.461 is an advanced course in macroeconomics that seeks to bring students to the research frontier. The course is divided into two sections. The first half is taught by Prof. Iván Werning and covers topics such as how to formulate and solve optimal problems. Students will study fiscal and monetary policy, among other issues. The second half, taught by Prof. George-Marios Angeletos, covers recent work on multiple equilibria, global games, and informational fictions.

15.012 Applied Macro- and International Economics uses case studies to investigate the macroeconomic environment in which firms operate. The first half of the course develops the basic tools of macroeconomic management: monetary, fiscal, and exchange rate policy. The class discusses recent emerging market and financial crises by examining their causes and considering how best to address them and prevent them from recurring in the future. The second half evaluates different strategies of economic development. Topics covered in the second half of this course include growth, the role of debt and foreign aid, and the reliance on natural resources.

In addition to discretionary fiscal policy, there are policies and institutions that can help reduce swings in the business cycle. This video discusses the role of automatic stabilizers in the business cycle.

Recall that the tax multiplier and expenditure multiplier magnify the effect of any change in spending or taxes. In this video, we use that fact to calculate the amount of spending or tax change necessary to close output gaps.

In this 6 minute video, students will examine what happens when a nation defaults. This video will support the standards EPF. 7 and 8

Inflation, unemployment, recession, economic growth—these economic concepts affect people in very real ways. In two thought-provoking, interactive lessons, this course teaches students about fiscal policy, the avenue by which Congress and the president attempt to influence the economy. Graphs compliments of FRED.

In this 5 minute video, students are introduced to the effects of fiscal policy on central banks, businesses and consumers. This video will enforce the standards related to standards EPF. 7b and 8

In previous lessons we've learned how expansionary monetary policy and expansionary fiscal policy can be used to mitigate a recession, but they don't have to be used in isolation from each other. Often there is simultaneous use of fiscal and monetary policy. Learn what happens when they are used at the same time in this video.

Fiscal policy can be used to close output gaps. Fiscal policy means using either taxes or government spending to stabilize the economy. Expansionary fiscal policy can close recessionary gaps (using either decreased taxes or increased spending) and contractionary fiscal policy can close inflationary gaps (using either increased taxes or decreased spending).

GDP and Pizza: Economics for Life is designed to help students in civics, economics and other social studies classes grasp challenging economic content – and to explain why these topics are important for citizens to understand.

In this course, your students will play the role of a freshman lawmaker in the U.S. House of Representatives trying to serve his or her constituents' goals and the long-term goals of the United States. Along the way, they'll learn about the federal budget process and how federal government initiatives and programs are funded.

Students engage in an activity that matches programs for low-income people with the type of economic inequity the program addresses and observe an activity simulating tax payments and transfers.

History holds many economic lessons. The Great Depression, in particular, is an event that provides the opportunity to teach and learn a great deal about economics-whether you're studying the economic reasons that the Depression took place, the factors that helped it come to an end or the impact on Americans who lived through it. This curriculum is designed to provide teachers with economic lessons that they can share with their students to help them understand this significant experience in U.S. history.

In this course, the student will build on and apply what you learned in the introductory macroeconomics course. The student will use the concepts of output, unemployment, inflation, consumption, and investment to study the dynamics of an economy at a more advanced level. As the course progresses, the student will gain a better appreciation for how policy shifts and changes in one sector impact the rest of the macroeconomy (whether the impacts are intended or unintended). The student will also examine the causes of inflation and depression, and discuss various approaches to responding to them. By the end of this course, the student should be able to think critically about the economy and develop your own unique perspective on various issues. Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to: Explain the standard theory in macroeconomics at an intermediate level; Explain and use the basic tools of macroeconomic theory, and apply them to help address problems in public policy; Analyze the role of government in allocating scarce resources; Explain how inflation affects entire economic systems; Synthesize the impact of employment and unemployment in a free market economy; Build macroeconomic models to describe changes over time in monetary and fiscal policy; Compare and contrast arguments concerning business, consumers and government, and make good conjectures regarding the possible solutions; Analyze the methods of computing and explaining how much is produced in an economy; Apply basic tools that are used in many fields of economics, including uncertainty, capital and investment, and economic growth. (Economics 202)

In this 3 minute video, students are introduced to the concept of fiscal policy which takes place via taxes, spending and borrowing in an effort to ease the boom and bust cycles of the business cycle. This video will aid in the mastery of standard EPF. 5 and 7

This is a JiTT exercise in which students apply introductory-level macroeconomic analysis to the question of how large the stimulus package put forward to Congress in early 2009 needed to be to close the recessionary gap facing the U.S. economy at that time. In particular, this exercise asks students to bring together the concepts of potential and actual GDP, recessionary gaps, fiscal policy, spending and taxing multipliers, and effects of changes in aggregate spending on employment and output.

This 8 minute video will explain the principles of Keynesian Economic Theory and the economist who came up with the idea, John Maynard Keynes. This video will enforce standard EPF. 5 (d)

15.015 Macro and International Economics focuses on the policy and economic environment of firms. This subject divided in three parts. The first part of the course is a study of the closed economy and how monetary and fiscal policy interacts with employment, GNP, inflation, and interest rates. Next, the course provides an examination of national economic strategies for development and growth and recent financial and currency crises in emerging markets. Finally, the course addresses the problems faced by transition economies and the role of institutions both as the engine of growth, and as the constraints for policy.

This is the second course in the four-quarter graduate sequence in macroeconomics. Its purpose is to introduce the basic models macroeconomists use to study fluctuations. Topics include the basic model or the consumption/saving choice, the RBC model or the labor/leisure choice, non-trivial investment decisions, two-good analysis, money, price setting, the “new Keynesian” model, monetary policy, and fiscal policy.

This course covers issues in the theory of consumption, investment and asset prices. We lay out the basic models first, and then examine the empirical facts that motivate extensions to these models.