universidade federal de santa catarina pós-graduação em letras ...

247models, each very clear in itself, but which cannot be compared as the authorsnote.[E#4] ...Taylor develops a neat formal model of choice among consumptionactivities involving primary and slave processes which are hedonic opposites.[E#10] The book covers a wide range of material - the authors state theirintention as being to ‘present the common heritage, the conceptual frameworkand the sets of models that are used and agreed upon by the large majority ofmacroeconomists’... On the whole, the basic ideas and models are presented inenough detail to make the book substantially self-contained in the way that atext-book needs to be...Concordances for the word ‘model(s)’ show 157 entries for the term in economics,92 in linguistics, and only 21 in chemistry, appearing more than twice as frequently ineconomics (once every 434 words) as it does in linguistics (1,033 words) or four timesas much as in chemistry (1,872 words). Models are seen as an element of solution to thecentral problem in the economic inquiry, i.e., predicting market swings:[E#11]...he presents a model to explain why the unprecedented swings in thevalue or the dollar in the 1980s had only a limited impact on the adjustment ofexternal imbalances...[E#9] In his view, simple models are just not good enough. There will alwaysremain a role for the economist as a policy adviser. After this rather optimisticconclusion in Chapter 4, Part III takes a twist by observing that new classicalmacroeconomies is in need of adequate micro-foundations for monetary theory....In [E#9] the reviewer classifies the author of the book as “optimistic” in viewingeconomists as policy advisers that compensate for the disadvantages of “simple models”.