Theory of the open economy?

Question

Is it usually "hard" to learn? I am having a little difficulty following it and just wondered if that was normal.

Answer 1

It all depends on motivation, logical thinking and good memory.

The problem there is that you just need to remember all previous models to understand whole well enough - then ability to combine it all on one system. So it requires keeping in mind a number of assumptions, and if you relax one of them, then whole system may behave absolutely in opposite direction.

All in all macroeconomics is modeling, dozens of variables and many assumptions. If you can handle it - then macroeconomics is easy (and just requires a bit of constructive imagination).

First - analyze (split by components) - then synthesize solution.

P.S. Real macroeconomics is much more complex than basic or intermediate macroeconomics. So "basic" or sometimes even "intermediate" levels is just childish and useless in real analysis.

♦ Edit:

Yep, usually it really is, micro is much simpler, you shouldn't necessarily keep all pieces in head to grasp whole picture, for micro it's not required to go back too far to find missing part.

All in all it's now a summer-time and all this brain-intensive stuff goes much harder ;)