A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics (David A. Moss) - 「世界のエリートが学ぶマクロ経済入門」- 168冊目

ジャンル: ビジネス・経済
英語難易度: ★★☆
オススメ度: ★★★☆☆

「世界のエリートが学ぶマクロ経済入門」。いかにもな邦題ですが、ナンチャッテなビジネス本に見えるこのタイトルで損している? いや、売り上げ的には得しているのかもしれません。数式や専門用語をなるべく使わずに書かれています。 (2014年発刊)

メモポイント
● リカードが唱えた比較優位論 (Comparativel advantage)。みんなが最も得意なことに専念して分業すれば、結果みんなハッピー。
サミュエルソンも言ってます。「現実世界はそんな単純じゃあないんだよ、という人の気持ちはわかります。それはモデルに過ぎないですからね。でも、全てがその通りにはいかないからと言ってこの考え方を無視していれば、いずれあなた損しますよ」だって。

Economists have since shown that Ricardo’s result can be generalized to as many countries and to as many goods as one wants to include. Although we can certainly specify conditions under which mutual gains from trade break down, most economists tend to believe that these conditions—these possible exceptions to free trade—occur relatively rarely in practice. Indeed, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson once acknowledged that “it is a simplified theory. Yet, for all its oversimplification, the theory of comparative advantage provides a most important glimpse of truth. Political economy has found few more pregnant principles. A nation that neglects comparative advantage may pay a heavy price in terms of living standards and growth.”

● アウトプットを増加させる三つの源とは。それは、労働、資本、そして前に記した二つ(input)を使っての効率化である。

Beginning with the question of what makes output rise over time, economists often point to three basic sources of economic growth: increases in labor, increases in capital, and increases in the efficiency with which these two factors are used.

● じゃあ、労働も資本もタップリあるのになんで不景気になるんでしょうか？イギリスの経済学者ケインズはこう考えました。「それはみんなが将来に対して悲観的に考える不安心理によるものだ。これにより消費は低迷する」と。

Since all the necessary inputs (labor and capital) were there, why had output fallen so dramatically in just a few short years?
The British economist John Maynard Keynes claimed to have the answer. “If our poverty were due to earthquake or famine or war—if we lacked material things and the resources to produce them,” he wrote in 1933, “we could not expect to find the means to prosperity except in hard work, abstinence, and invention. In fact, our predicament is notoriously of another kind. It comes from some failure in the immaterial devices of the mind. . . . Nothing is required, and nothing will avail, except a little clear thinking.”
His key insight, implied by the phrase “immaterial devices of the mind,” was that the problem was mainly one of expectations and psychology. For some reason, people had gotten it into their heads that the economy was in trouble, and that belief rapidly became self-fulfilling. Families decided that they had better save more to prepare for the future. Seeing a drop in consumption on the horizon, businesses decided to scale back both investment and production, leading to layoffs, which reduced workers’ incomes and thus exacerbated the drop in consumption.

マクロ経済学の基本書として多くのレビューワーからオススメされています。うん、確かに文章は平易で読みやすかったし、説明もわかりやすいと思います。