This short, concrete, and to-the-point book guides students through this vast field of conflicting opinions. The book begins from the premise that students benefit most from seeing a balanced treatment of all available views. For instance, this book provides coverage of both ad hoc and optimizing models. It also explores divisions such as flexible price versus sticky price models, rationality versus irrationality, and calibration versus statistical inference. By giving consideration to each of these 'mini debates;, this book shows how each approach has its good and bad points.

Nelson C. Mark is Professor of Economics at Ohio State University. He has been widely published in journals such as the Economic Journal, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of International Economics, American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, International Economic Review, Journal of Financial Economics, and Journal of Monetary Economics. He is presently editor of Journal of Money, Credit and Banking.