----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- There were a number of books and articles on the beast -- Rao (Rao, The Debate about AS/AD, Routledge Publishers) has a recent one -- but it continues in the texts. As Chas suggests, I attempted to salvage it, but there was no market for it, and my latest editions simply went with the standard approach, attempting to tell students the problems with it. It started as an attempt to integrate inflation into the Keynesian model, but it is now a model that essentially eliminates the Keynesian model, as many books are not even presenting the Keynesian model as the derivation of the AD curve. Some new books are putting inflation on the horizontal axis, and are using an assumed Taylor rule monetary policy to "explain" the downward sloping AD curve. The real problem, in my view, is that the macro economy is a complex system, and cannot be described by simple graphs--which are meant to convey understanding to students. The story is in dynamics, not equilibrium. The reality is that we simply don't understand much of the fluctuations in the economy in a clear way, which is evident from our difficulty in predicting the movements of the aggregate economy. Dave Colander ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]