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 20th century, to wide swings in oil prices and increased concern about climate change in the first decades of the 21st 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.