The main aim of the course is to make sure that students taking the course grasp the macroeconomic point of view, realize that macro economic analysis is different from micro analysis, and that they learn to evaluate different macroeconomic approaches in a critical manner.
The main question of macroeconomics is whether or not a free market economy can come to full employment equilibrium. The course starts with a discussion of the neoclassical framework which answers this question affirmatively. The failure of this framework to explain the Great Depression of the 1930s takes us to a detailed analysis of the Keynesian answer. As the course proceeds, the students begin to see how Keynes revolutionized economic thinking, actually inventing macroeconomics, and how his views were assimilated into the neoclassical mainstream after his death. Monetarism and rational expectations are introduced as the finishing touches of the liquidation of Keynes' innovative ideas and, ultimately, of macroeconomics. The course ends with a discussion of the resurgence of Keynesian economics 1990s and how his ideas immediately came to the foreground with the outbreak of the world financial crisis in 2008.