Keywords: Western schools of economics, economics, macroeconomics
Macroeconomics is a discipline that studies the overall employment level, income and other macroeconomic development conditions in macroeconomic activities, and its core elements are macroeconomic theories, policies and econometric models. The schools of western economics have evolved and developed several times, and gradually formed a system, which has had a great influence on the analysis of micro-basic issues of macroeconomics, is a guide for people to understand and interpret the connotation and essence of macroeconomics, and plays a key role in the development of macroeconomics.
First, the development process of western schools of economics
(A) the classical school
The classical school was born in the British Industrial Revolution from 65438 to 0776. At that time, social productivity was greatly improved, production technology and experience made unprecedented progress, accumulated a lot of wealth around the world, and the market demand was increasing, thus promoting the birth and development of the classical economics school. This school abides by economic laws, and thinks that economic laws will dominate price and factor compensation, and that the price system can allocate production resources well. It trusts the adjustment ability of the market itself and does not need any government intervention. The main representatives are Ricardo and Adam Smith. The classical school has two famous theories, one is Adam Smith's theory of absolute advantage of international trade, and the other is Ricardo's comparative advantage theory.
Neo-classical school
Neo-classicism school, also known as Cambridge school, originated from the end of 19 to the beginning of the 20th century, and was founded by Marshall, a famous British economist. The important economic theories produced by neoclassical school, including distribution theory and price equilibrium theory, advocate the integration of supply and demand theory, marginal utility theory, productivity theory and production cost theory to form a premise of complete competition. The core theory of neoclassical school is the equilibrium price theory, which holds that the composition of different demand and product price is determined by the law of diminishing marginal effect, and the equilibrium price theory replaces the axiology. Based on the equilibrium price theory, the distribution theory is developed, and the proportion of various production factors in national income is analyzed. It is believed that the proportion is determined by the equilibrium price dominated by their respective supply and demand relations, and the economic aggregate is composed of various production factors.
Keynesianism
Keynesianism was born during the Great Depression in the capitalist world, with high unemployment rate, serious decline in output capacity, very slow socio-economic development and even economic retrogression. Keynesianism can be interpreted as total demand management, which gives a scientific explanation for economic depression: "insufficient consumption demand and insufficient investment demand". Therefore, the government needs to play a leading role in the economy, stimulate demand growth through fiscal policy or monetary policy, promote economic consumption and investment, and then drive economic recovery and restore normal operation. The core content of Keynesianism is IS-LM curve, which was summarized and written by Keynesian Hicks, and it is the best explanation of Keynesianism. However, it was questioned and criticized by the neoclassical school, and it was believed that Keynesianism brought economics back to the field of classical economics.
Neoclassical comprehensive school
Neo-classical comprehensive school was born after World War II. Many followers of Keynes re-studied the unsolved problems of Keynesianism under the background of social and economic development at that time, trying to find the answers, such as the analysis of prosperity and inflation. The representatives of neoclassical comprehensive school are Samuelson, Tobin and Solo, among which Samuelson's economics is the most famous, emphasizing the use of fiscal and monetary policies to adjust the total social and economic demand, promote employment and eliminate economic crisis. And put forward the theory of mixed economy to deal with the problems of economic system.
(5) Neo-classical macroeconomics school
Neoclassical macroeconomics was born in the United States in the 1970s, when the social and economic development in the United States was seriously stagnant, the unemployment rate was high and the inflation problem was serious. This led to monetarism and rational expectation analysis model, and thus evolved the economic development system. Neoclassical macroeconomists believe in and rely heavily on four assumptions: maximizing personal interests, clearing the market, rational expectations and natural law assumptions. They believe that the private economy can maintain its own stability, the currency is neutral in the process of economic development, and the currency is also neutral in the short-term development. And criticized Keynes's economic theory, thinking that Keynes's policy of actively intervening in the economy is harmful to economic development.
(6) New Keynesianism
Neo-Keynesianism is a new school of economics developed on the basis of Keynesianism. It draws lessons from the theoretical defects of Keynesianism and develops further on the basis of neoclassical macroeconomics, thus developing Neo-Keynesianism. Neo-Keynesianism was born in the mid-1970s, establishing a microeconomic foundation and laying a good foundation for the analysis of microeconomic problems.
Second, the micro-basic issues of macroeconomics
(A) on behalf of the individual analysis model
The classical analysis mode of economics is representative individual analysis, and micro-analysis and overall transformation can be regarded as macro-aggregates, providing necessary tools for macroeconomic analysis. There are three main problems in the representative individual analysis model. The first is that the number of social and economic individuals is large and the individual differences are great. The workload of representative individual analysis is too large, so it is impossible to accurately grasp the behavior and information of each individual, and it is easy to make mistakes and mistakes. Secondly, the analysis premise of this model is to assume that the individual itself has defects, but in the real society, the proportion of representative individuals is a small part, which makes its representativeness greatly questioned. Thirdly, under the representative individual analysis mode, if the aggregate assumption is reasonable, it will also be disturbed by various factors in the economic market, leading to problems in aggregate behavior and the results are not uniform and fixed.
(B) the problem of rational expectation analysis model
Under the model of rational expectation analysis, there are great differences between macroeconomics and microeconomics. Neo-classical school believes that the rational expectation analysis of macroeconomics needs to be based on the optimization of individual behavior, and the development of economic subject is the optimal economic behavior covered by macroeconomic theory. However, under the rational expectation analysis mode, completely rational economic activities and behaviors do not exist, and individual economic behaviors will constantly change due to the influence of macroeconomic situation and economic environment. If rational expectation analysis is used to predict the change and development trend of the economic situation, there must be some economic risks, and it is impossible to make a completely accurate prediction and analysis.
(C) Metrological verification analysis model
The econometric verification analysis model is widely used in economics. Compared with the conventional analysis method, we should first ask questions, introduce functional models, then put forward assumptions, and finally conduct econometric verification analysis in the form of empirical data analysis. Various schools of economics will establish corresponding functional models according to their own understanding and research results on the micro-basic issues of macroeconomics, and then start to make assumptions about the economic system, and use data tools for reasoning and deduction to get the mathematical expression of economic laws. In the process of metrological verification and analysis, the analysis results are influenced by many factors, such as the questions raised are divorced from reality and the function model is improperly used. The problem of analysis mode easily leads to the defect of over-idealization, and there are many key factors in the analysis process that cannot be accurately quantified, which makes the analysis results have great errors.
Third, the micro-foundation of macroeconomics in western schools of economics.
After hundreds of years of development and evolution, western schools of economics have been confused and successful, and the analysis of micro-basic issues of macroeconomics is still in place. The concrete division between macroeconomics and microeconomics should start with Keynesianism, but the fundamental goal of its revolution is subversion, not separation. Of course, Keynes's subversive thought has also been questioned a lot. Many economists believe that the relationship between macroeconomic variables will be affected by economic policies, which makes the analysis of related issues wrong. Economists represented by Lucas believe that if there is no micro-foundation, macroeconomic analysis cannot be carried out normally and correct analysis cannot be obtained. In addition, it is precisely because of doubt that it has been promoting the development and evolution of western schools of economics, guiding economists to constantly explore the micro-basic issues of macroeconomics, devoting themselves to finding a coordinated development path between them, promoting sustainable economic development, and making the most accurate interpretation and analysis of the economy.
Conclusion:
Western schools of economics have been evolving in the process of economic development, and their understanding of the micro-basic issues of macroeconomics is getting deeper and deeper, which has promoted the development of social economy. Macro-economy and micro-economy are two relatively independent personal capital, but the relationship between them is inseparable, and economic theories are complementary and both are indispensable. Therefore, in the process of discriminating the micro-foundation of macroeconomics, different schools of economics have different social backgrounds and different economic theories, and the results of discrimination are also very different, which requires us to correctly understand various schools of economics, deeply understand economic theories, and interpret their views on the micro-foundation of macroeconomics, so as to break through thinking and realize the multi-faceted unity and harmonious development of economics.