Mesoeconomics : a micro-macro analysis

This book is an extension of the analysis contained in my Econo mica paper (Ng, 1982a), though certain aspects of the analysis. were published earlier (Ng, 1977, 1980). All chapters contain mainly new arguments or extensions, except Chapter 3 (the first four sections of which correspond to the Economica paper), Chapter 10 (reproducing much of Ng and McGregor, 1983), and Chapter 11 (reproducing much of Ng. 1981).

Basically, a microeconomic analysis of a representative firm that takes account of the effects of macroeconomic variables (aggre gate demand, aggregate output, average price) is used to model the responses of the economy (or an industry in Ch. 5) to economy-wide changes in cost, demand, expectation, and so on. It is believed that it is the simplest analysis that captures essential interactions at the macro and general-equilibrium level. It can be used to examine the effects on output and the price level of many changes, shedding light on important problems like unemploy ment and inflation. The simplicity of the analysis makes the book accessible not only to professional economists but also to advanced undergraduate and graduate students. To enlarge the potential readership, a note to non-mathematical readers follows this pre face, and an intuitive explanation of the basic results is provided in section 2.1.