Lars Ljungqvist and Thomas J Sargent

In its study of the broader economy, macroeconomics is a vital tool for understanding the world around us, offering insights into issues that affect us all, like inflation and unemployment. Which textbooks to read to learn more about it? Here, Raffaele Rossi, Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester, recommends his top macroeconomics textbooks, starting with entry-level books aimed at undergraduates all the way through to the tough tomes you’ll need to plough through if you’re doing a doctorate and want to work at the frontier of the discipline.

It’s a discipline in vogue with the Nobel prize committee and mysterious to most of the rest of us. So we asked econometrician Mark Thoma to explain what he does, and why there’s such a battle of ideas (and models) in economics. He recommends his favourite econometrics books.