Real World Macro (42nd edition)

Edited by Ed Ford, Elizabeth T. Henderson, Luis Rosero, Bryan Snyder, Val Voorheis, and the Dollars & Sense collective

Note: If you are a student at UMass-Amherst or Bentley, please order through Collective Copies/Levellers Press (link here). If you order through us, there will likely be significant delays.

Real World Macro is a lively, thought-provoking supplement to introductory and intermediate macroeconomics textbooks. The new 42nd edition asks the big questions that standard textbooks try to avoid: What’s so great about growth? Is unemployment natural? Why should inequality matter?

Along with covering the basics—monetary and fiscal policy, productivity and investment, inflation, and unemployment—Real World Macro also includes new articles on increasing inequality, immigration, labor, and the climate crisis. Chapter introductions summarize the themes examined in each article, and discussion questions help students relate macroeconomic theories to the latest real-world issues. Real World Macro’s engaging articles are drawn from the pages of Dollars & Sense, the leading magazine of popular economics.

Praise for Real World Macro:

"The principles of economics books (yes, even mine) tend to be on the dull side and leave aspects of the economy and economics unchallenged. Real World Micro and Macro can spice up your course and lead students to ask the type of questions they should be asking." —DAVID COLANDER, Middlebury College

"Real World Macro’s topical applications of macroeconomic analysis provide the clear, condensed critical perspective lacking in most macroeconomics texts." —RICHARD D. WOLFF, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note: This is the table of contents for the latest (42nd) edition of Real World Macro. If you are ordering a pdf of an earlier edition of this title, please ask your instructor for that edition's table of contents, and make sure you order your pdf using the URL your instructor gave you.

• Chapter 1: Perspectives on Macroeconomic Theory
  • Introduction
  • 1.1 From Nixonomics to Trumponomics
    Nick French
  • 1.2 What's Wrong with Neoliberalism?
    Robert Pollin
  • 1.3 Neoliberalism as Neocolonialism   
    Jayati Ghosh
  • 1.4 How the Coronavirus Crisis Became an Economic Crisis
    Alejandro Reuss
  • 1.5 Opening Pandora’s Box: The Basics of Marxist Economics
    Alejandro Reuss
  • 1.6 Sharing the Wealth of the Commons
    Peter Barnes
  • 1.7 "Everything Is Connected to Everything Else"
    Arthur MacEwan

• Chapter 2: Macroeconomic Measurement
  • Introduction
  • 2.1 What Does It Mean to Be "Better Off"?
    Zoe Sherman
  • 2.2 GDP and Its Discontents
    Alejandro Reuss
  • 2.3 Measuring Economic Development
    Alejandro Reuss
  • 2.4 Undercounting the Poor
    Jeannette Wicks-Lim
  • 2.5 The Inflation Reality and the Attack on Wages
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 2.6 (Mostly) Useful Government Numbers About Poverty, Jobs, and Unemployment 
    Frank Stricker

• Chapter 3: Economic Growth and Business Cycles
  • Introduction
  • 3.1 Dating the Recession
    John Miller
  • 3.2 Growth, Growth, Growth: What Will Happen?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 3.3 A Future for Growth—If We Choose It?
    Gerald Friedman
  • 3.4 Growing Together, Flying Apart
    Gerald Friedman
  • 3.5 Who Benefits from U.S. Economic Expansions?
    Ed Ford
  • 3.6 Immigrants Create Jobs for U.S. Workers
    Ed Ford
    

• Chapter 4: Unemployment and Labor
  • Introduction
  • 4.1 The Great Resignation and the Labor Shortage 
    John Miller
  • 4.2 The "Natural Rate" of Unemployment
    Robert Pollin
  • 4.3 What Would Full Employment Cost?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 4.4 Combating “Right-to-Work” Laws Across the South
    Ed Ford
  • 4.5 Is the Gender Pay Gap by Choice?
    Lynn Duggan
  • 4.6 AI and the Future of Work
    Robert Ovetz
  • 4.7 Keeping Track of the Assault on Working People
    Ed Ford

• Chapter 5: Inflation and the Cost of Living
  • Introduction
  • 5.1 The Relationship of Unemployment to Inflation
    Ramaa Vasudevan
  • 5.2 Inflation Is Surging: Round Up the Usual Scapegoats
    John Miller
  • 5.3 The Price Increases That Matter for the Poor
    Jayati Ghosh
  • 5.4 Keynes, Wage and Price “Stickiness,” and Deflation
    Alejandro Reuss
  • 5.5 The Economic Environment of Generation Z
    Meredith G. Troupe
  • 5.6 Inflation: The View from the Boardroom
    Dollars & Sense Collective

• Chapter 6: Wealth, Inequality, and Poverty
  • Introduction
  • 6.1 Wealth, Inequality, and All That
    Bill Barclay
  • 6.2 Income Inequality and Poverty in the United States
    Ed Ford
  • 6.3 Just Follow the Money
    Chris Maisano
  • 6.4 Geese, Golden Eggs, and Traps: Why Inequality is Bad for the Economy
    Chris Tilly
  • 6.5 Death and Inequality
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 6.6 Race Inequality, Class Inequality
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 6.7 A Carbon Tax Alone Will Not Solve Climate Change
    John Miller
  • 6.8 Control the Vampire Companies
    Jayati Ghosh
    
    
• Chapter 7: Fiscal Policy, Deficits, and Austerity
  • Introduction
  • 7.1 A Trillion Dollars a Year, And No New Taxes  
    John Miller
  • 7.2 Trump’s Policies Would Be Bad for the Economy  
    John Miller
    
  • 7.3 Corporate Taxes: Less, Less, and Less
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 7.4 The Debt Ceiling: What's It All About?
    John Miller
  • 7.5 Rescued, Then Abandoned: The Elimination of the Expanded Child Tax Credit
    Ed Ford
  • 7.6 Reform of Global Taxation Cannot Wait
    Jayati Ghosh
  • 7.7 The Potential of Tax Reform in Latin America
    C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh
    
    
• Chapter 8: Money and Monetary Policy
  • Introduction
  • 8.1 The Demise of the Dollar
    Gerald Epstein
  • 8.2 What Is Money?
    Doug Orr
  • 8.3 The New Tools of the Fed
    John Miller
  • 8.4 The Fed's 2% Inflation Target
    John Miller
  • 8.5 The Fed and the Racial Wealth Gap
    John Miller
  • 8.6 It's Time to Ditch "Pay-for" Politics
    Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray
  • 8.7 Pushing on Strings
    Gerald Friedman
    
    
• Chapter 9: Finance, Savings, and Investment
  • Introduction
  • 9.1 Financialization: A Primer
    Ramaa Vasudevan
  • 9.2 Bubble Bubble, Toil and Trouble
    Alejandro Reuss
    
  • 9.3 Concentration of Stock Ownership
    Ed Ford
  • 9.4 The Heavy, Unequal Burden of Student Debt
    Nick French
  • 9.5 Stock Buybacks: Any Positive Outcome?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 9.6 Is "Short-Selling" Bad for the Economy?
    Arthur MacEwan

• Chapter 10: The Global Economy
  • Introduction
  • 10.1 Trump’s Dumb and Dumber Tariffs
    John Miller
  • 10.2 The Gospel of Free Trade: The New Evangelists
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 10.3 Globalization in Crisis
    John Miller
  • 10.4 The Globalization Clock
    Thomas Palley
  • 10.5 Does U.S. Prosperity Depend on Exploitation?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 10.6 Why is the World Bank Attacking Land Reform in the Philippines?
    David Bacon
  • 10.7 Milei’s Psycho Shock Therapy
     Matías Vernengo 
    
  • 10.8 Credit Squeeze
    Justin Villamil
    
    
• Chapter 11: Resistance and Alternatives
  • Introduction
  • 11.1 A Fraction of What We Pay in Fossil Fuel Subsidies Could Fund a Just Transition  
      C.J. Polychroniou interviews Robert Pollin  
    
  • 11.2 The Richmond Progressive Alliance Has Won Elections and Made City Hall Better for 20 Years
    Steve Early
    
  • 11.3 Essential, But Treated as Expendable: Farmworkers Are Vital to Climate Justice
    Lin Nelson
  • 11.4 Worker Power Comes from Workers
    Amanda Page-Hoongrajok 
    
  • 11.5 Worker Power at Amazon
    Rand Wilson and Peter Olney   
  • 11.6 A Night in the Life of an Amazon Warehouse Worker
    Rose Baker
    
  • 11.7 Battling Starbucks
    Saurav Sarkar

Edition: 42nd
Date of publication: June 2025
ISBN: 978-1-939402-76-9
Pages: 409
Price: $55.00