This book, via the presentation of a hundreds of news reports, explicitly teaches students how to apply key macroeconomic concepts as they read media accounts of current macroeconomic policies and events—- an activity many of us hope our students will continue long after the final exam.
Robert L. moore, Professor of Economics, Occidental College; and Editor, Teaching Tools Section, Economic Inquiry
A common goal of introductory economics courses is that students should learn to read and understand economic articles in quality newspapers. However, lengthy lists of topics and a lack of adequate preparation time mean that faculty rarely give students sufficient training and practice. Professor Kennedy's book provides a solution: each chapter teaches the essential concepts concisely, illustrates how economic knowledge can be used to decode news stories, and provides many short, usable, excerpts for students to interpret.
Philip K. Way, University of Cincinnati
As so many readers of his little book on Econometrics have long known, Peter Kennedy has a special talent for presenting difficult concepts in ways that are clear and intuitively pleasing, while stressing rather than minimizing what is most important about the concepts. His new book on macroeconomic concepts and data that are widely reported in the media does the same thing, and provides a lot of nice examples, applications, and problems to boot. I'm sure it will find several grateful audiences.
Mike Watts, Professor of Economics, Purdue University
Kennedy's book breaks new ground. It skillfully repackages macroeconomics to help readers understand 'media economics.' Each chapter concludes with challenging examples from the press that develop problem-solving skills. The many short end-of-chapter media exercises help drive home his approach.
Lee Hansen, Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin
Finally! A textbook that provides students with what they need to know to survive and succeed in today's economy. Macroeconomic Essentials for Media Interpretation is well written, lively, and succinct—students will actually read assignments before coming to class.
James W. Marlin, Former President and Executive Director, EconomicsAmerica--Nebraska
This text takes on a worthwhile challenge: that of teaching macroeconomics so that the media coverage of the subject on a day-to-day basis can be understood and analyzed. It is ideally suited to students in serious need of a course that can teach them how to understand real-world events as they are recorded in the media. The approach of focusing on 'news clips' is quite a valuable one and holds much promise. The examples and exercises at the end of each chapter are likely to be the most valuable part of this book for both students and faculty. In particular, the 'worked-through' examples give a good indication of how to approach the examples that are left to the students. In addition, there are many news clips exercises, enough to keep even the most zealous students occupied, as well as to indicate how important it is to be able to interpret them.
Suzanne J. Cooper, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of government, Harvard University