Keynesbiscuit, Marketariat, and the Fool in the Shower: Metaphors for Teaching Policy Lags in Macroeconomics Principles

Date

2017

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Academy of Economics and Finance

Abstract

Principles of macroeconomics textbooks devote a great deal of space to countercyclical fiscal policy, but generally provide only scant coverage to factors that make its application difficult in the real world. In fact economists are generally skeptical of the ability of fiscal policy to smooth the business cycle because of the policy-lag problem. This paper provides a metaphor—a horserace between active policy and the selfcorrecting mechanism—that can help students move into the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning (analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating) with respect to fiscal policy. The metaphor can be extended to include discretionary monetary policy as well.

Description

Keywords

Citation

Taylor J. E. & Taylor, J. L. (2017, Spring). Keynesbiscuit, Marketariat, and the Fool in the Shower: Metaphors for teaching policy lags in macroeconomics principles. Journal of Economics and Finance Education, 16(2), 12-18.

DOI