Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy: A Keynesian Perspective

One of the dominant paradigms in financial economics is the so-called intertemporal general equilibrium approach. This holds that optimizing agents invest in asset markets to secure future consumption streams. This view does tend to be a little one sided and the real decisions of economic agents on consumption, asset accumulation and how portfolio decisions impact asset prices do not tend to be reflected. in addition to this, the paradigm has severe difficulties in explaining asset price volatility and equity premia. Opposed to this, there is a long tradition of modeling financial markets from a macroeconomic perspective and most of this literature has come from a Keynesian perspective. Financial market dynamics are perceived as generating strong volatility and, at times, even instability - and asset pricing and returns are seen to be much more separate from consumption. This important new book from a group of Keynesian, but nonetheless technically-oriented economists largely adopts the latter approach.Semmler, Willi is the author of 'Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy: A Keynesian Perspective', published 2010 under ISBN 9780415771009 and ISBN 0415771005.