本書的作者羅伯特·J.戈登是美國西北大學(xué)的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)教授,他長期從事通貨膨脹、失業(yè)與生產(chǎn)力發(fā)展的研究工作,在此領(lǐng)域頗有建樹。本書可以作為初級宏觀經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)的教材,作者按照他所認(rèn)為的最容易被讀者所接受的方式,講解了宏觀經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)最基本的理論,討論了大多數(shù)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家普遍認(rèn)同的結(jié)論。與其他初級教材相比,本教材具有自己的特點:第一,更加關(guān)注經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)內(nèi)容的完整與連貫,正文中很少有冗繁、復(fù)雜的數(shù)學(xué)推導(dǎo),必要時作者將其添加在注釋或附錄中。第二,在教材的最開始部分就引入開放經(jīng)濟(jì),這正是我們這些無可選擇地生存在這個經(jīng)濟(jì)全球化世界里的讀者所關(guān)注的內(nèi)容。第三,注重理論對現(xiàn)實的解釋,進(jìn)行了大量的實證研究,當(dāng)理論與現(xiàn)實擬合得不夠理想時,作者充分分析了具體原因。第四,作者十分注意對宏觀經(jīng)濟(jì)政策的分析,這引導(dǎo)我們更加關(guān)注對理論的應(yīng)用。作者簡介:Robert J. Gordon Robert J. Gordon is Stanley G. Harris ProfessorintheSocialSciencesand Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. He did his undergraduate work at Harvard and then attended Oxford UniversityinEnglandonaMarshall Scholarship. He received his Ph.D. in 1967 at M.I.T. and taught at Harvard and the University of Chicago before coming to Northwestern in 1973, where he has taught for more than 30 years and was chair of the Department of Economics from 1992 to 1996. Professor Gordon is one of the world's leading experts on inflation, unemployment, and productivity growth. His recent work on the rise and fall of the New Economy, the U.S. productivity growth revival, and the recent stalling of European productivity growth, have been widely cited. He is the author of The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices, which has become known as the definitive work showing that government price indexes substantially overstate the rate of inflation. His book of collected essays, Productivity Growth, Inflation, and Unemployment, was published in 2004. He is editor of Milton Friedman's Monetary Framework: A Debate with His Critics, The American Business Cycle, and The Economics of New Goods. In addition he is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles and more than 60 published comments on the research of others. In addition to his main field of macroeconomics, he is also a frequently quoted expert and author on the airline industry, and is the founder and president of an Internet chat group on airline management.Gordon is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic' Policy Research (London), a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He has served as the coeditor of the Journal of Political Economy and as an elected member of the American Economic Association. He serves currently as senior advisor to the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity and on the economic advisory panels of the Congressional Budget Office and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. He has served as a member of the Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods of the Social Security Administration, and on the national "Boskin Commission" to assess the accuracy of the U.S. Consumer Price Index.Gordon lives in Evanston, Illinois, with his wife Julie and their two dogs, Lucky and Toto.