Macroeconomics & Policy

Housing that households can obtain and retain without compromising essential non-housing needs.

Aggregate demand is planned spending on an economy’s domestically produced final goods and services at a given overall price level.

Automatic stabilizers are tax and spending mechanisms that moderate economic fluctuations without requiring new policy decisions.

The business cycle is the recurrent, irregular alternation between expansion and contraction in an economy’s aggregate activity.

A central bank is a public monetary institution responsible for monetary policy, central bank money, and functions supporting financial and payment-system stability.

A consumer price index measures changes over time in the prices of goods and services purchased by households, providing a widely used indicator of consumer inflation.

Creative destruction is the process through which innovation generates economic growth while displacing established products, technologies, firms, and activities.

Deflation is a sustained decline in the general price level, increasing money’s purchasing power and potentially intensifying debt burdens and economic weakness.

Disposable income is income available for consumption or saving after accounting for taxes, social contributions, and relevant transfers.

Economic growth is an increase in real economic output over time, driven by expanding productive resources and improvements in productivity.

A family of economic models explaining sustained growth through investment, human capital accumulation, and innovation generated within the economy.

The common currency of the euro area, used by 21 EU member states as of 2026.

An exchange rate expresses the value of one currency in another and connects international trade, financial markets, and monetary policy.

The Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States, created in 1913 to stabilize the banking system and now responsible for monetary policy.

The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States, responsible for monetary policy, financial supervision, and payment services.

The fiscal multiplier measures how much economic output changes in response to an externally induced change in government spending or taxation.

Fiscal policy uses government taxation, spending, and borrowing to influence economic activity, income distribution, and long-term development.

Forward guidance is central-bank communication about future monetary policy intended to influence expectations and present financial conditions.

A broad price index that measures changes in the prices of domestically produced goods and services by comparing nominal GDP with real GDP.

The Great Depression was a worldwide economic crisis beginning in 1929, marked by collapsing output, mass unemployment, banking failures, and uneven recovery during the 1930s.

Gross domestic product measures the value of production within an economy over a specified period and is a central indicator of economic activity.

Human capital is the knowledge, skills, experience, and health embodied in people that contribute to productive activity and well-being.

Income inequality describes differences in the distribution of income among individuals or households, measured using income shares, ratios, and statistical indices.

A tax on the income or profits of individuals and companies, usually computed by applying rates to taxable income; a major source of government revenue.

Inflation is a sustained rise in an economy’s general price level, reducing money’s purchasing power and affecting incomes, contracts, and economic policy.

Inflation expectations are beliefs about future price increases that influence economic decisions, financial markets, and monetary policy.

Inflation targeting is a monetary policy framework built around a publicly announced inflation objective, forward-looking decisions, and central bank accountability.

British economist whose theories of employment, demand, and money helped establish modern macroeconomics and shaped the postwar international monetary order.

Joseph Schumpeter was an Austrian-born economist known for explaining capitalist development through entrepreneurship, innovation, and creative destruction.

Keynesian economics explains how aggregate demand influences output and employment and provides a basis for countercyclical economic policy.

Knowledge spillover occurs when ideas or expertise benefit people or organizations beyond their originators without full compensation for those benefits.

The labor market connects workers and employers, shaping employment, wages, working conditions, and the allocation of labor across the economy.

A lender of last resort provides emergency liquidity when ordinary funding sources fail, helping contain financial panics without necessarily rescuing insolvent institutions.

Macroeconomics studies economy-wide output, employment, inflation, growth, and the policies and institutions that influence them.

Macroprudential policy uses financial regulatory tools to contain system-wide risks and strengthen the financial system’s resilience to shocks.

American economist, leading monetarist, and advocate of market-oriented public policy, awarded the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

A minimum wage is a legally mandated floor on the hourly pay employers may offer, shaping employment, incomes, prices and policy debate worldwide.

The monetary base consists principally of currency in circulation and banks’ reserve balances at the central bank, underpinning payments and monetary policy implementation.

Monetary policy comprises central-bank actions that influence financial conditions to stabilize prices and economic activity.

The money multiplier is the ratio of a monetary aggregate to the monetary base, also used in models of deposit expansion under specified banking assumptions.

Money supply is the stock of currency, deposits, and other qualifying monetary assets held within an economy.

National accounts are an integrated statistical framework recording an economy’s production, income, expenditure, financial transactions, and wealth.

Open market operations are central-bank transactions that manage banking-system liquidity, influence interest rates, and implement monetary policy.

Paid leave is time away from work during which an employee keeps receiving pay or a wage-replacement benefit, provided by law, collective agreement or employer policy.

French economist (born 1956), co-recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for theories of innovation-driven growth and creative destruction.

Productivity measures output relative to inputs, indicating how effectively resources are used to produce goods and services.

Property tax is a levy on the value of land, buildings, or other property, and it is a major source of local government revenue in many countries.

A long-term arrangement in which public and private parties share responsibilities and risks in providing public assets or services.

Purchasing power parity compares currencies through the prices of comparable goods and services, enabling price-adjusted international economic comparisons.

Quantitative easing is a monetary policy tool in which central banks purchase financial assets using newly created reserves to ease financial conditions and support economic activity.

A recession is a significant, widespread, and lasting decline in economic activity, usually the contraction phase of the business cycle.

How China's currency, the renminbi (yuan), is priced against foreign currencies, how the People's Bank of China manages it, and why it matters for trade, finance and reserve-currency status.

Simon Kuznets was an American economist who pioneered national income measurement and empirical research on economic growth and inequality.

Sveriges Riksbank is Sweden’s central bank, founded in 1668, responsible for monetary policy, currency issuance, payment settlement, and contributing to financial stability.

The System of National Accounts is the international statistical framework for consistently measuring an economy’s production, income, expenditure, assets, and liabilities.

Tax incidence describes how the economic burden of a tax is distributed after prices, wages, returns, and behavior adjust.

Taxation is the compulsory collection of revenue by public authorities to finance expenditure and influence economic activity and income distribution.

Technological change is the development and adoption of new knowledge, tools, and methods that alter production, economic opportunities, and the organization of work.

Unemployment is the condition of being without employment while seeking and being available for work, measured relative to the labor force.

Value added is the value of production remaining after deducting intermediate goods and services used in producing it.