Public Service Announcement, for those who wish to talk intelligently about macro, instead of ranting. Here’s what I use (in response to Steven Kopits asking “What the he** do you teach your students, Menzie”). The following are free use, or older editions that have been superseded by newer.
Blanchard and Johnson, Macroeconomics (earlier version of what I use for my undergrad macro courses).
Garin, Lester, Sims, Intermediate Macroeconomics (what I use for a UW M.Sc. level course)
Wooldridge, Introductory Econometrics (I use Stock and Watson, Introduction Econometrics).
Feenstra, Taylor, International Economics. (I’ve been trying to find a free access version of this– I can’t).
Coming up: Chinn and Irwin, International Economics (Cambridge University Press, 2024). My chapters on international are largely lecture notes, available here (see items in [#]).
Off topic – looks like the U.S. has, atlast, gone beyond scolding in dealing with Israel’s ethnic cleansing efforts:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/07/us-concerns-over-israels-gaza-policy-led-to-weapons-holdup-00156528
The weapons being held up are reportedly Joint Direct Attack Munitions and Small Diameter Bombs – both bombs delivered from the air. I know nothing about Israel’s weapons inventory or burn rare, so I can’t guess whether this leans more toward symbolism or practicality. Either way, it’s a step.
So, about that decision to hold up some weapons –
As of December, Hamas and Israel’s IDF were in general agreement that the civilian-to-combatant death ratio in Gaza was 2-to-1:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-officials-15000-likely-killed-in-gaza-since-start-of-war-5000-of-them-are-hamas/
Depending on who you believe, that’s either better than during Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza (Palestinian Authority) or worse (IDF). The Palestinian authority estimates that 75% of Palestinian deaths in 3014 were civilian:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150626164255/http://www.pchrgaza.org/portal/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10491:statistics-victims-of-the-israeli-offensive-on-gaza-since-08-july-2014&catid=145:in-focus
Israel says the number was 50%:
https://apnews.com/general-news-d67fccf01b84478db30f3033df0b9e83
There are claims floating around that Israel has achieved an historic new low in civilian deaths relative to combatant deaths:
https://twitter.com/yaakovkatz/status/1749870793486405750?lang=en
That, my friends, is quite probably complete crap. I won’t bother you with the evidence, but I have it handy if anyone has a problem.
The point I’m clumsily trying to make is that we have been supplying weapons that are responsible for the deaths of innocents on an appalling scale. This is, by the way, also in compete conflict with our stated policy in favor of an independent state for Palestinians.
Note that Israel’s government doesn’t count police as civilians, contrary to standard practice. That skews their kill ratio away from civilian deaths and, one suspects, makes police officers “fair game”. But then, when bombing urban areas, everyone is fair game. In addition, the IDF reportedly counts all males between the ages of 18 and 59 as combatants – doctors, teachers, bakers, you name it. Another big “fair game” monstrosity. We have to suspect that civilians are by far the likeliest target of the bombs we send to Israel, no matter the stated aim of dropping them.
In the end, ratios are useful as evidence, but what matters is lives and welfare. Netanyahu’s government is systematically destroying lives at the fastest pace of any 21st century conflict, sytematically destroying the urban landscape of one of the most heavily urbanized places on the planet, systematically destroying the healthcare system, water system, sewage system, road system, electrical system and educational system for 2 million people who cannot escape what is being done to them. Israel has denied them food assistance, water and medicine by trumping up charges against the main UN agency which provided those things and then refusing to allow others to take their place.
This ghastly attack on humanity is what the U.S. has, at long last, decided in one limited way not to support. Till now, whatever words may have been spoken, the actions of the U.S. amounted to meager efforts to assist the same Palestinians we were helping to kill – it’s stupid and utterly immoral.
Steven Kopits? The clown who denied there ever was monopsony power? The clown who thinks velocity is a constant? Or the clown who thinks suppression is a macroeconomic model? Stevie does not read textbooks. He only reads his worthless blog.
We get that Bruce Hall only reads right wing materials so maybe we can set the Trumpian troll Greg Mankiw’s first macroeconomic. After all – Greg advised a Republican President but in a few cases tries to get things right.
For example he noted how tax cuts for the rich combined with a large increase in defense spending drove up real interest rates and crowded out investment. Greg went so far as to call Klowns like Kudlow (who advised both Reagan and Trump) cranks and charlatans.
Oh wait honest economics is not Bruce Hall’s cup of tea. Never mind.
Thanks Menzie – I really dig how you link to the freely available versions. Keep on truckin’!
Thank you. I might finally learn something about economics. Now finding the time to go through those books reasonably thoroughly might be a challenge, of course.