Wharton MBA for Executives

On the first day of Macroeconomics class, Professor Abel said that the study of macroeconomics is always interesting if there are things going on in the world and country during the semester.  If you’re lucky you may take the course during an election year or during a recession or during a housing / credit crisis, etc…but we have the lucky fortune of taking it now…when we have all of the above!

I haven’t quite discovered the solution to our country’s economy problems yet but I hope to at least gain some insight by the end of this term.  By the end of this term we will have elected a new President, experienced the worst recession in at least a few decades, have seen financial institution such as Lehman Brothers shut their doors, experienced the effects of a highly controversial $700 billion bailout plan, etc.

We had our macroeconomics midterm last session so it did force me to study up on topics such as production, employment, unemployment, consumption, saving, investment, goods, market equilibrium, savings and investments in open and closed economies, money, business cycles, inflation (and hyperinflation), CPI, etc.  I’ve learned a few interesting things such as Ricardian equivalence (basically says that government spending has to come from taxes now or taxes later so even if they cut taxes now, it doesn’t really matter because you’ll pay for it later).  And of course the traditional concepts of the classical economics view by Adam Smith versus the Keynesian view.  I’ve been trying to keep an open mind but my personal philosophies are generally for less-government so I tend to follow more than classical economist theory.

Anyway, macro is interesting.  I think I actually enjoyed learning microecomics more (Smetters was cool) but I do enjoy the theories in macro.