Macroeconomics in Ecological Context

Natural resources have been a recurring subject of public interest, from the environmental awakening in and the oil crises of the later 20^th century, to wide swings in oil prices and increased concern about climate change in the first decades of the 21^st century. Standard macroeconomics books treat resources in passing, in an ad hoc manner, if at all. This text integrates resources into the model from the ground up, allowing a more logically consistent understanding of the economic effects of changed resource availability. But the underlying structure remains mostly traditional: a full-employment perspective on the long run and a Keynesian approach to business-cycle fluctuations. This provides an easier adaptation for instructors and gives students the tools to understand economic analysis done in a more conventional framework. The business-cycle material starts with a “natural history” of money to help students see the connections between social and physical phenomena.