Économie+

19 sheets available

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Debt

A debt is a sum borrowed that must be paid back, with interest. The debt of the French State and the rest of general government reaches 115.7% of GDP (the wealth produced in one year) at the end of 2025. This explanation covers what a country's debt is for, what makes it dangerous, the role of the borrowing rate, and why a lot of debt, or none, can help or hold back its growth.

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Borrowing Rates

The borrowing rate is the price of borrowed money. For France, it forms every day on the government bond market. This explanation shows why a bond's price and its rate move in opposite directions, what makes the rate rise or fall, and why a rise weighs on the budget only gradually.

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GDP & Growth

What is GDP?

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is the central indicator of national accounting. It measures the monetary value of all final goods and services produced within a country's borders over a given period. Mankiw presents it as the most closely watched economic statistic in the world, as it summarizes an entire nation's economic activity in a single figure.

Ch. 1Read

Inflation & Prices

Understanding Inflation

Inflation is the general, sustained and self-reinforcing rise in the price level within an economy. Mankiw presents it as one of the most important macroeconomic phenomena to master, as it directly affects purchasing power, interest rates, wages, and all economic decisions made by agents.

Ch. 2Read

Unemployment & Employment

Unemployment and the Labor Market

The unemployment rate measures the share of the labor force without a job and actively seeking one — one of the indicators most closely watched by markets. It is a lagging indicator of the business cycle (firms shed jobs after the downturn starts and rehire once recovery takes hold), and it directly influences monetary and fiscal policy decisions.

Ch. 3Read

Financial Markets

Financial markets connect agents who need financing (firms, States) with those who have savings to invest. Together with financial intermediaries (banks, funds), they form what Mankiw calls the financial system, ensuring the efficient allocation of capital and the pricing of risk through the mechanisms of supply and demand.

Ch. 4Read

Monetary Policy

Monetary policy refers to a central bank's actions on interest rates and banks' reserves to ensure price stability, the ECB's primary objective; in the United States, the Fed also pursues maximum employment, without putting either goal ahead of the other. Its decisions pass quickly to financial markets, then to the cost of new loans; according to a study by ECB economists, the effect on unemployment peaks on average after about a year, and the peak effect on inflation comes after about two years.

Ch. 5Read

Fiscal Policy

Fiscal policy is the use by public authorities of public spending and taxation to steer activity—stimulus, multiplier, deficit and debt. Alongside monetary policy, it is one of the two major levers of macroeconomic policy; it acts on aggregate demand directly through public spending, indirectly through household income, but it is subject to long-term sustainability constraints.

Ch. 6Read

International Trade

International trade refers to all exchanges of goods and services between national economies. Mankiw devotes foundational chapters to it, starting from the principle of comparative advantage, under which each country benefits from specializing in the goods for which its opportunity cost is lower than that of its partners.

Ch. 7Read

Supply & Demand

Aggregate Supply and Demand

The aggregate supply and demand (AD-AS) model is the basic framework of macroeconomics as taught in textbooks. The American economist Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard professor and the author of standard textbooks, presents it as the fundamental tool for understanding short-run economic fluctuations: how the general price level and total output are determined, and how economic shocks and policies affect them.

Ch. 8Read

Savings & Investment

Savings and Investment

Saving and investment weigh on an economy's long-run level of wealth. Gregory Mankiw, the author of widely used economics textbooks, presents the market for loanable funds in them, within a broader chapter. This simplified model describes an economy in which national saving finances productive investment and the real interest rate balances the supply of funds (saving) and the demand for funds (investment).

Ch. 9Read

Money & Banking

Money and the Banking System

Money is the most liquid asset in the economy, serving as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. This explanation shows how money is created, mostly through bank lending, how the central bank influences that creation through its policy rate, and what the money supply can tell us about inflation.

Ch. 10Read

Cycles & Crises

Business Cycles and Crises

The economy moves in cycles, alternating between expansions and contractions. The literature shows that short-run fluctuations are inherent to the functioning of market economies and that understanding them is essential to anticipate turning points, adapt public policies, and manage financial risks.

Ch. 11Read

Growth (Solow)

The Solow Model and Long-Run Growth

The Solow model constitutes the reference framework for understanding long-run economic growth. Mankiw devotes two full chapters to it (ch. 8 and 9, 9th ed.) and considers it one of the most important contributions of 20th-century macroeconomics. It explains why some countries are rich and others poor, and why standards of living differ so much across the world.

Ch. 12Read

IS-LM Model

The IS-LM Model and Macroeconomic Equilibrium

The IS-LM model is the central analytical framework for understanding the interactions between the market for goods and services and the money market in the short run. Mankiw devotes two full chapters to it (ch. 11-12, 9th ed.) and presents it as the most influential interpretation of Keynesian thought, indispensable for analyzing the effects of monetary and fiscal policy.

Ch. 13Read

Rational Expectations

Rational Expectations and the New Classical Macroeconomics

Rational expectations theory, developed by John Muth (1961) and popularized by Robert Lucas (Nobel Prize 1995), holds that economic agents make optimal use of all available information to form their forecasts. Mankiw presents it in Chapter 14 (9th ed., "Aggregate Supply and the Short-Run Tradeoff") as one of the major intellectual revolutions in macroeconomics, having called into question the effectiveness of stabilization policies.

Ch. 14Read

Political Economy of Debt

The Political Economy of Public Debt

The political economy of public debt analyzes the political determinants of state borrowing, the mechanisms of debt sustainability, and the strategic interactions between governments, creditors, and voters. Mankiw devotes the chapter "Government Debt and Budget Deficits" of his macroeconomics textbook to this topic, presenting the foundational debates about debt: burden on future generations, Ricardian neutrality, and accumulation dynamics.

Ch. 15Read

Advanced Labor Market

Advanced Labor Market and Job Search Theories

The labor market does not function like an ordinary goods market: matches between workers and jobs take time, information is imperfect, and institutional frictions create persistent unemployment. Mankiw covers the fundamentals of the labor market in Chapter 7 (9th ed., "Unemployment") and its links with the business cycle in Chapters 10 and 14.

Ch. 16Read

Behavioral Economics

Behavioral Economics and Cognitive Biases

Behavioral economics incorporates insights from psychology to understand real-world economic decisions, which are often irrational. Mankiw devotes growing boxes to it, acknowledging that economic agents do not always match the rational homo economicus of classical models.

Ch. 17Read