Customer Reviews

Advanced Macroeconomics

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

There can be no question that Romer's text-book is an outstanding tome. However, I'm sure most reviewers would agree with me when I say that economists tend to have a love/hate relationship with this book. We love this book because of the breadth of topics covered and the quality of Romer's analysis and exposition. His discussion of dynamic inconsistency is the best I've seen, and the opening chapter on the Neo-classical growth model sets the standard to this day.

A fellow reviewer observed that complaints concerning Romer's penchant for "trivial" mathematics were misplaced because the technicality of modern macroeconomics precludes the possibility of discussing the issues in any other way. I agree. But I think a fairer assessment would be that there are instances where Romer could develop the mathematical underpinnings in a more consise way. The best example is the second chapter on the Ramsey growth model. The easiest way to understand this model is by using optimal control/dynamic programming techniques - which is how it is taught on most graduate courses. Romer's decision not to follow this route is probably borne of a desire to make the book more accessible to undergraduates - who are unlikely to come across these methods. Whatever the intention, the result is an exposition that confuses more than enlightens. Would it not have been better to include a good coverage of optimal control techniques in the appendix?

Nevertheless, an excellent book.

I regret to say that this is not a good accompaniment for my graduate macroeconomics class. I thought I could somehow get some mileage out of this book, but as I read it I found out that its lack of technical details and rigor make my lecture notes look superior. I was misled to think that this is a great textbook through the early positive reviews below, that's why I bought it. Nevertheless, the empirical content is more than enough to satisfy one's curiosity, but I think it is not worthwhile to study advanced macroeconomics without learning fully the necessary theories and the accompanying mathematical techniques. This textbook must not be the choice for a core graduate level macroeconomics class; it's wordiness is comparable to the undergraduate textbook "Intermediate Microeconomics" text by Varian. It is readable of course, when you want to pass the time, but it won't do for a graduate level text. I'm disappointed because this is the second edition already but still the author stuck to the same way of presentation. Perhaps the only differences between the first and the second edition are the empirical data sets and a new chapter and nothing else. The first three chapters and chapter 7 of Obstfeld and Rogoff's treatise, "Foundations of International Macroeconomics," Barro and Sala-i-Martin's, "Economic Growth," and the chapters 2,3 and 4 of Blanchard and Fischer's, "Lectures in Macroeconomics," provide a more comprehensive view of modern acroeconomics.

This book tells you what is going on in macroeconomics recently. It is a very good reference book in case you want a quick review of all macroeconomics topics. Easy language and very helpful exercises. Subjects are explained more with intuition rather than technical details. A must if you are interested in working on macroeconomics.

The book gives a comprehensive review of all major macroecomic problems at an intermediate level. A reader is assumed to be familiar with basic econometrics and math. The book contains A LOT of macroeconomic models which upgrade it's level to upper-intermediate. Together with Barro and Sala-i-Martin, and Aghion and Howitt the book can be used as a perfect post-graduate course of Growth theories. So if one wants to start studying macroeconomics on an intermediate/advanced level - this is the book to start with.

Romer concisely constructed a book on advanced macro theory that complements well with Barro/Sala-i-Martin, and Blanchard/Fischer. The chapters are well-written and useful. Another reviewer did assert that there is too much math and not enough "explanation". Well, grad level economics is laden with math, however, the idea with Romer is to use the math to find the intuition that we should already know from undergraduate work. the book is well-divided between growth theory and money/employment issues. I will admit that I believe it is somewhat weak in open-economy, but there are a number of books that specialize in that anyway. Another must have for econ grad students.

The Advanced Macroeconomics from Professor David Romer is in my opinion the best Advanced Macroeconomics textbook ever written, due to some points:
- It treats in a simple manner several issues regarding the most advanced issues on Macroeconomics,
- It's updated and varied,
- It's accessible for new comers in the field.

This book (2nd edition) is fine. It covers all important macroeconomics topics (economic growth, business cycles, aggregate demand -consumption and investment-, labor markets and economic policy -monetary and fiscal policy-). It is up-to-date and its math is not very difficult to follow. In a nutshell, it is a must for a thorough understanding of modern macroeconomics. By the way, the 1st edition was translated to French, Japanese, Chinese, Greek, and Polish.

This is one of the best books on macro around. It is easy to follow and would be an ideal companion to Blanchard and Fischer's book. It covers all the major recent developments in the field which every decent macroeconomist should know well.

One might divide economics books into two categories: those that are strong on explanation and intution, and those that are strong on proof. This book has neither, and unfortunately it appears to be the standard in graduate macroeconomics courses. I find myself wondering if it deliberately chooses the most obscure way to write its equations. For instance, in the Solow and Ramsey models, Romer retains the population and household variables throughout the entire proof rather than simply write them in intensive form. If you're reading the book after a lecture, it stands a chance of confusing you, especially because it tries to avoid optimal control theory (not a good idea!).

This book was a required text for my first semester of the Economics PhD core. I found the book to be a terrible disaster. Supposedly this book is a more basic approach to advanced macroeconomics, but I found I comprehended higher-level texts with greater ease than this book. The wording is very obtuse, which makes understanding the verbage difficult. Once you get past the words and understand the meaning, however, the explanations are also very inadequate given the complexity of the material.

All in all, I have read my fair share of poorly-written textbooks, but I think this one tops them all.