[Book Review:] A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics by David A. Moss

I started out my undergraduate studies as an ambivalent pre-med student. I’d always excelled in my language arts classes without much effort, but I had to apply myself more to get those same high marks in the sciences. I thought I could have the best of both worlds and double major in English and Biology, but I had my doubts. When I expressed my trepidation about the rigorousness of the pre-med coursework, my guidance counselor’s advice for my first semester was, essentially, “Just take classes that sound interesting to you! You should have some fun your first semester, don't overload yourself with those boring pre-med classes!”

I looked at a variety of classes offered my first semester, but I was too intimidated to register for any economics or business courses listed in the catalog. Word on the street was that Economics 101 was a weeder course many students failed. As the first semester went on, a friend of one of my roommates who seemed to spend more time in our dorm room than the library struggled with the class and, ultimately, failed. This confirmed my impression that passing the introductory economics class would be impossibly difficult for me. I graduated four years later without having taken a single economics course.

In hindsight, Occam’s razor favors the theory that this friend of my roommate was simply not a very good student. She spent an awful lot of time complaining about schoolwork as she and my roommates gussied themselves up while “pre-gaming” for frat parties. If she’d allocated more of her time to memorizing economic theories and mathematical formulas, she would've had a better chance of passing Econ 101.

Ten years later, this book has provided me with the introduction to economics I never got at my university, nor from my high school, for that matter. Unlike the cutthroat design of Econ 101 at University of Michigan, this book is not designed to suss out who will fail the course and drop out of business school. The author does present the reader with mathematical formulas and economic theories, but even those who haven’t picked up a math textbook in years will be able to comprehend them. The charts, graphs, and figures provided are all relevant and expounded upon in the text. The theory of comparative advantage is fleshed out by the historical account of political economist David Ricardo arguing against British lawmakers’ protectionist trade policies in 1817. The relationship between the US Federal Reserve and short-term interest rates is compared to the speedometer and gas pedal on a car. If you can understand layman’s explanations of these theories and formulas, you can then understand how these same principles apply to a nation’s economy on a massive scale.

Most, if not all, macroeconomic principles were presented in a nuanced way. The reader is not encouraged to memorize these theories as though they are laws of physics. The author presents economics as an imperfect science, as actual economic conditions are messier than the principles appear on paper. He argues that learning these fundamentals of macroeconomics is important because "only by understanding the baseline relationships can you begin to recognize departures from the rule and, most important, begin to formulate reasoned explanations for what might be driving them.”

In the introduction to the book, Moss explains why it’s important for the general public to have a basic understanding of macroeconomics. The information is approachable to those coming into the study of economics as complete novices. It also could be a good refresher for those who learned a bit about economics in the past but want to get back into it. I knew very little about the subject, but careful reading of this book has given me a solid foundation for further independent study of macroeconomics.

A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics is organized into two parts. Part one covers the three basic pillars of macroeconomics: output, money, and expectations. Part two goes into more depth on each of these topics. So, if you want an even more concise guide to macroeconomics, you can simply read the first three chapters, a mere 85 pages in length.

If you're looking for a compendious introduction to macroeconomics for beginners, or if you want a refresher for terms and theories you struggled to learn back in your Econ 101 class in college, you’ve found the right book.

An Autobiography in Athens: Ancient and Modern.

How different my life would have been if COVID-19 instead had been COVID-16. I flew to Kunming, China to meet Eisel on February 14, 2017. If the pandemic had struck three years earlier, our internet-assisted love story would have been impossible. Of course, the way our love story unfolded was almost impossible as it was, but not quite. 

Just a few weeks before the closure of the borders on March 21st, we moved back to Victoria, BC. This is the longest period of time we've stayed in one place since we met each other. These past nine months have probably been the most stable of Eisel's adult life.

As the year comes to an end, the border remains closed, and the case count continues to rise in both the U.S. and Canada. While in lockdown, I've had a lot of time to reflect on the past. At this time last year, Eisel and I were in Athens together. We'd met up in Toronto on November 19th and one week later we were boarding a flight to Athens. As our time in Athens came to a close, I prepared to head back to my parents' house to continue my seven-month treatment of Isotretinoin (a.k.a. "Accutane") in a small town on the outskirts of Detroit, while Eisel prepared to return to Puli, a small town in central Taiwan.  

Traveling to Athens meant a lot to Eisel. In his youth, he'd been interested in learning Latin and Greek but considered it to be "out of reach," an endeavor open only to elite, private-school educated students. In his political science undergraduate degree, he'd been disappointed in every aspect of the quality of education at the University of Toronto, except for what he could learn on his own at the library, seeking out primary sources like Aristotle and Plato to teach himself what was lacking in the curriculum. He spent his twenties in Southeast Asia, independently studying Pali and bits and pieces of five other Asian languages while becoming a scholar of Theravada Buddhism. His interest in Ancient Greek philosophers may not have been at the forefront of his mind during those years, but, in his thirties, he read Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War as he cradled his infant daughter in his arms. 

Traveling to Athens meant a lot to me, too. I'd actually been to Athens before, when I was only nine years old, traveling with my family on a Mediterranean cruise. My maternal grandparents enjoyed traveling together in their retirement, and, as they got on in age, they took an interest in the more relaxed form of travel offered by cruise lines. After my grandfather passed away, my grandmother didn't travel as much as she used to. She was getting into her eighties, and my family thought it would be an adventurous "last hurrah" for her to cruise the Mediterranean with her children and grandchildren.