Macroeconomic Modeling The Cowles Commission Approach

An empirical approach to constructing macroeconomic models.

Macroeconomic Modeling presents an empirically based approach to the construction of macroeconomic models—the Cowles Commission approach—as a response to the backlash that has taken place since the late 1970s to this methodology. The emphasis in the literature has been on tightly specified theoretical models, which lack realism. In this book, Ray C. Fair develops models to analyze a variety of issues and events in macroeconomics and the US economy, and he explains the econometric techniques needed to estimate those models. Many of the results are either contrary to results from the theoretical models or cannot be examined by the theoretical models because they omit many important features of the economy.

Fair covers a broad range of topics, including inflation and unemployment, the size of wealth effects, the behavior of the Federal Reserve and its effects on the economy, the effects of fiscal policy, Okun’s law, and contractions and expansions. Macroeconomic Modeling will appeal equally to graduate students and researchers as well as macroeconomic policy makers.

Ray C. Fair is Professor of Economics at Yale. His research has primarily been in the areas of macroeconomics and econometrics, although he has also done work in finance, voting behavior, and aging in sports.