# Institutionalist Macro: An American Approach

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### Laurence Wilse-Samson

**NYU Wagner School of Public Policy**

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> "Institutions create the regularities in behavior that quantitative work analyzes." — Wesley Clair Mitchell

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Most macroeconomics textbooks begin with theory and treat data as illustration. This one begins with measurement and treats theory as a tool for interpreting what we find.

The result is a different kind of graduate macro: one that asks *how GDP is actually constructed* before modeling it, that takes the Federal Reserve's balance sheet as seriously as its Taylor rule, and that treats financial crises not as tail events to be assumed away but as constitutive of how capitalist economies work.

The approach draws on a tradition that runs from **Young** and **Mitchell** through **Kuznets** and **Copeland** to **Kindleberger** and **Mehrling** — economists who insisted on understanding economies as they actually operate, measured by specific agencies, governed by specific rules, intermediated through specific institutions.

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### What Makes This Book Different

**Measurement first.** Part I treats data construction — how BEA builds GDP, how BLS measures employment, how price indexes handle quality change — as substantive intellectual content, not background.

**Financial plumbing matters.** Flow of funds, sectoral balances, the hierarchy of money, the dollar's global balance sheet — the institutional architecture of the financial system runs through the entire book, not just a chapter on banking.

**Theory as tool, not doctrine.** Each chapter presents compact Theory Tools — the Euler equation, Tobin's Q, search and matching, the New Keynesian Phillips curve — but only after establishing the empirical puzzles they were built to address. No single framework gets the last word.

**Real data throughout.** 173 figures built from FRED, BEA, BLS, and BIS data. Every chapter ends with hands-on Data Exercises using publicly available series.

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### The Seven Parts

| Part                  | Chapters | What You'll Learn                                                                                 |
| --------------------- | -------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **I. Measurement**    | 1–5      | How GDP, employment, prices, and financial accounts are actually constructed — and what they miss |
| **II. Sectors**       | 6–9      | Consumption, investment, labor markets, and the Phillips curve — empirics first, then theory      |
| **III. Finance**      | 10–12    | Money, banking, and asset prices as institutional systems, not frictionless markets               |
| **IV. Policy**        | 13–17    | The Fed, monetary and fiscal policy, large-scale models, and identification                       |
| **V. Dynamics**       | 18–21    | Business cycles, financial crises, growth, and the innovation system                              |
| **VI. International** | 22–24    | The dollar system, exchange rates, and global financial cycles                                    |
| **VII. Distribution** | 25       | Inequality as a macroeconomic variable, not just a social concern                                 |

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### Start Reading

* [**Preface**](https://laurence-wilse-samson.gitbook.io/textbooks/frontmatter/preface) — Why this book exists
* [**Introduction**](https://laurence-wilse-samson.gitbook.io/textbooks/frontmatter/introduction) — Six reading paths through the material
* [**Chapter 1: Seeing the Macroeconomy**](https://laurence-wilse-samson.gitbook.io/textbooks/part-i-measurement/ch01_landscape) — Begin here

### Technical Appendices

Fourteen self-contained appendices (A–N) provide graduate-level mathematical depth — data methods, time series, canonical models, input-output analysis, intertemporal optimization, dynamic programming, general equilibrium, the New Keynesian model, search and matching, financial frictions, fiscal dynamics, open economy macro, balance sheet analysis, and distributional national accounts. Each includes Python code. Treat them as companions to the main chapters or work through them independently.

* [**Appendix A: Working with Macroeconomic Data**](https://laurence-wilse-samson.gitbook.io/textbooks/technical-appendices/appendix_a_data) — Start here for the technical track

### Reference

* [**Guide to the Literature**](https://laurence-wilse-samson.gitbook.io/textbooks/reference/guide_to_the_literature) — Curated reading paths by topic
* [**Glossary**](https://laurence-wilse-samson.gitbook.io/textbooks/reference/glossary) — Key terms and definitions
* [**Bibliography**](https://laurence-wilse-samson.gitbook.io/textbooks/reference/bibliography) — Full references