Macroeconomics Paper

Introduction to Macroeconomics

This paper is intended as an introduction to the discipline of macroeconomics, one of the major fields of economics. In the first part, I give an overview of this discipline and point out the benefits of the study of macroeconomics. In the second part and the third part I deal with the major variables used in the field of macroeconomics: the economic output, the unemployment rate, and the inflation. Finally, attached to the conclusions, I offer a few suggestions of further research.

Macroeconomics: the Big Picture

Macroeconomics represents a field of economics concerned with the functioning, the structure, and the working, of an economy understood as a whole, rather than as single separate markets. This idea of economy comprises local, national, and global economies. In order to understand how the whole economy functions, macroeconomists take into consideration several of the most significant variables that shape an economy: the recession and growth which measure the level of production of the economy as a whole; the unemployment rates that is the percentage of workers in the economy who are not employed and are looking for a job; and, finally, the inflation rate, which is the level at which the average prices of goods are growing over time (Snowdown, 2002, p. 15-30).

By combining the indicators resulting from the study of these variables, macroeconomists try to formulate models of analysis which can elucidate the connections between a variety of different factors: national income, consumption, savings, investment, international trade or international finance. In contrast, another major subfield of economics, microeconomics, is mainly concerned with understanding the actions of individual operations, such as companies or just consumers, and how their activities can affect the level of prices or quantities of goods and services in particular markets. If macroeconomics is undoubtedly a discipline that...