Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/History of macroeconomic thought/archive1

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Resolved FAC comments from Jakob.scholbach (talk)[edit]

Origins
  • "Business cycle theory attempted ..." -- when was that?
    • Added some timing for business.
  • "wheather" -- really? Maybe seasons instead?
    • Yes weather. The analysis was based on how weather impacted the heavily agricultural economies. Seasonality is different.
      • OK. I'm striking this. But you might consider giving a little bit more detail on this. Maybe other readers will also wonder.Jakob.scholbach (talk) 17:58, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Added some more on weather. Also expanded the business cycle section a little more.
  • Maybe contrast microeconomics to "employment, price level, and interest rates" by inserting "macroeconomic data, such as" ?
    • Data doesn't neccearily have anything to do with it.
  • Say's law -- when? (I'm asking since this is about "history of m.", so having a rough timeline seems beneficial to me)
    • The timing of Say's law doesn't have much relevance here, but added more dates to the section generally.
  • "Adding more money" -- sounds somewhat procedural. How/by whom was this done?
    • Whoever the "monetary authority" is. Depends on the economy and the system. I think it's best to stay abstract.
  • Be more consistent with first names. Suggestion: spell it out at first occurrence, leave it out later. Counterexample to this: "Keynes" in section 1, "John Maynard Keynes" in section 2. Similarly with other names elsewhere.
    • Removed several of these. Some repetition is needed. Its not otherwise clear that the Barro in section 3 is the same as the in 5.
  • A question that just came to my mind when reading: who is credited with the concept of financial markets? If I understand correctly, the early guys didn't use that concept, right?
    • I think you're reading too much into it. Financial markets existed pre-macro, but the concept wasn't integrated into a full model of the economy until Keynes.
Keynes' general theory
  • "Classical economists" -- maybe mention the names of the most important ones (in section 1, rather)?
    • Done.
  • The sentence "When the demand for money increases, ..." is hard to digest because of its sentence structure.
  • At the end of section 2 you mention two groups of dissenting scholars, but only explain one of them. How about the second?
    • Clarified.
Keynes' successors
  • "His emphasis on uncertainty" -- I failed to find anything relating to uncertainty in the section on K. Did I miss something? If he even emphasized uncertainty, it should be mentioned above, I believe.
    • Initially tried to keep the Keynes section thinner by skimping on this. Added a new section based on your points.
  • The IS/LM model is impossible to understand, since you don't explain it. What does IS, LM stand for? What are the axes (labelled i, Y) in the chart?
    • Added an explantation of IS/LM.
  • wikilink "inflation" in section 3.2.?
    • Done.
  • I don't know whether this slipped under my radar earlier or it is more recent, but the sentences "Scholars have debated the importance of these aspects of Keynes's work.[25] One of several points of contention in interpreting Keynes." are disconnected to the sequel (and the second one lacks a subject). Just remove the two? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 17:58, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think those sentences lost their usefulness in the shuffle. I agree removing them is the best way to deal with this. I cut them out.
Monetarism
  • You must be aware of that yourself, but anyway: why are there two sections on Philips curve?
    • One's the development of the PC and the other's the takedown. Reworded headlines to clarify.
  • "suffered stagflation, simultaneous increases in unemployment and inflation." -- for the illiterate it is unclear that the second bit is an explanation of the term stagflation. Reword a little bit.
    • Reworded.
  • The change of the tense ("Friedman and Phelps found ... In their thinking, there is ") is a bit odd. Is it necessary?
    • Fixed.
  • How did F. and P. "find" it? Based on empirical data? Theoretizing?
    • Reworded. In reality, a bit of both.
  • "Friedman and Schwartz argued that Keynesians missed the relationship by only looking at nominal rates and neglecting real interest rates," -- this seems to be a key point of the debate, also underlined by your emphasis. However, it is hard to understand since you don't explain the difference between nominal rates and real interest rates. Please do so.
  • "performed better in under stagflation " -- typo
    • Fixed.
  • "Monetarism faced a major test when Paul Volcker took over the Federal Reserve Chairmanship. " -- I'm wondering about the word "test". Maybe rather a challenge or the like?
    • I really think "test" is more appropriate here. It was effectively an experiment in how monetarism would work in practice. It wasn't necessarily a challenge. In fact it mostly succeeded, but failed politically. I don't think "challenge" fits.
  • When did Volcker take over?
    • 1979, which I added.
New classical economics
  • "A futher challenge" -- implies the existence of an earlier challenge. Do you mean monetarism here?
    • Reworded to "Following monetarism, a further challenge."
  • "principally with Robert Lucas, but new classical economics" -- is "but" necessary?
    • Reworded.
  • "Under rational expectations, expectations were based on optimal forecasts." -- the phrasing is a bit odd.
    • Rephrased.
  • Is "forward-looking" etc. standard terminology here? Also, why do you highlight the words?
    • Yes, "forward-looking" is a standard phrase to explain rational expectations. Emphasis is to focus on contrast of rational/forward vs. adaptive/backward expectations. Changed emphasis to focus on forward and backward instead of looking.
  • "They claimed ..." -- who?
    • NCEs, rearranged section to clarify.

Generally speaking I found the sections 5 and beyond more difficult to read than the earlier sections. Maybe this is because it is getting more involved content-wise. But also, phrasing and wording can be improved. One example:

  • "While building this model, Lucas attempted to incorporate the empirical fact that there had been a trade off between inflation and output without ceding that money was non-neutral in the short-run.". Can remove "While building this model" without any harm; "trade off between inflation and output " -- unclear (to me): what kind of trade-off (isn't this spelled with a hyphen?) can occurc between inflation and output?; "money was non-neutral in the short-run" -- again unclear to me: neutrality of money is something I don't understand and also it only occurs just once before (section 4.3). I believe it is worth explaining these terms more thoroughly?
    • Explained earlier and put in better context.
      • Good explanation.
  • Another occasion of terminology that is probably easy to explain: "relative prices"
New Keynesian economics
  • "Recent studies using data..." - these two sentences seem a bit disconnected to the earlier ones. Does "recent" mean 2010-ish? Also why present tense now? Also, should be "for to six months"
    • Removed "recent." One was 2004. The sentences are a little disconnected. They could go, but I was trying to tie throw in some empirics after doing heavy theory.
  • The "invisible hand" occurs out of the blue. (without blue wikilink, ironically). Maybe round it off by saying a word about it?
    • I linked it. I don't think it's a good place to explain it. Mainly, I used it since its a more poetic term than "market forces."
  • "fails to coordinate the usual, optimal, flow" -- is "optimal" POV here?
    • Optimal is a technical term here for maximizing economic efficiency (also a technical term).
  • The image caption in 6.2. is way too long. Is it possible to integrate most of it in the actual text? Also, it not exactly coherent with the image ( in the image, but e∗ in the caption. Finally, it might be worth pointing out that the "45 degree line" is the one with .
    • Tried redoing the caption. Slightly better, but I'll try some more.
  • "until the demand for workes met the supply" should read "meets"
    • Fixed.
  • Hysteresis is linked, but not explained. Is it possible/reasonable to do so? (I personally know the concept from physics, but many readers won't).
    • Added an explanation. Clearly needed one.
  • "so their interests are not represented" -- This is a laymen's question: how about the government? It might step in?
    • Depends on the way the model is set up. Its hard for a government to order a company to cut wages and higher more workers, but government could incentive this or inflate the currency. Government could also be part of the problem. If insiders make campaign contributions and outsiders do not, government might pass policies that reinforce the divide.
General things
  • Why is this called "History of macroeconomic thought?" Wouldn't "History of macroeconomics" be more apt?
    • I think its important to limit this to macroeconomic theory. All of macroeconomics seems too broad. There's a lot of econometric and policy work that is skipped over here. As mentioned above, I don't have a problem changing the title to "History of macroeconomic theory," if you think that would work better.
      • OK. Fine with me. You should create redirects for other reasonable page titles, so that everyone finds your fine work!
  • In a similar vein: what exactly is the delination between this article and macroeconomics?
    • I'm working on expanding the very short macro article now. First, the topic is broader. For example, I see the macro article eventually having sections on monetary and fiscal policy. Second, this article is a "history" so its focus and structure is chronological instead of topical. I also see this article as higher level article. The main macro article should be much more accessible.
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