Genesis, Context, Focus, and Accounting Relations of Standard Macroeconomics

Abstract

This chapter defines the field of investigation and the main issues analysed by short-term, demand-side macroeconomics and long-term growth models in the now advanced economies. It presents also the set of accounting relations (for the production, uses, and distribution of income, for the balance of payments, and for the macro financial accounts) that are used to describe the functioning of the macroeconomy, and to assess its performance. Finally, it discusses briefly the context and historical evolution of macroeconomic theory during the last two centuries, by referring to the classical, Keynesian, neoclassical synthesis, monetarist, new classical, and structuralist macroeconomic approaches.