Coordination Games : Complementarities and Macroeconomics

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Summary: Essential Reading on Macroeconomic and Financial Instability
Review: This is an essential book for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of macroeconomic and financial instability: recessions, depressions, financial panics, currency crises, bank runs, the Russian and Asian crises, and similar events. It also presents fundamental analysis critical to the understanding of monetary and fiscal policy coordination; for example in the European Union, and in dealing with the Asian macroeconomic and financial crisis. In addition, it is essential reading for students and enthusiasts of game theory. The book is very well organized, has an unerring eye in its coverage of topics, and is almost astonishingly well written. While parts of the book are technically demanding for the lay reader, the rest can be read with profit by the non-specialist and non-student. Indeed, the technical parts can still profitably be skimmed, and the gist of the ideas are clear to the patient non-specialist. Hence, exactly as advertised, the book is essential for graduate courses, but also useful as a reference for the specialist, and is required reading for the informed public. Unlike what is suggested in the advertising, however, I and my colleagues also feel the book can be taught and assigned to advanced undergraduate students, and to the more motivated of the intermediate students as well. I will do so. In short, if you haven't read this book you are simply out of date. Excellent brief summaries of this material can be found in David Romer's graduate text Advanced Macroeconomics, McGraw Hill, pp. 294-299, in Jansen, DeLorme and Ekelund's undergraduate text Intermediate Macroeconomics, West Publishing, pp. 412-419, and in John Taylor's introductory undergraduate text Principles of Macroeconomics, Houghton Mifflin, in the "New Keynesian School" subsection. Background readings appear in N. Mankiw and D. Romer (eds.) New Keynesian Economics, vol. 2, Coordination Failures and Real Rigidities, M.I.T. Press Readings in Econommics (Benjamin Friedman and Lawrence Summers, eds.). But the very best place to learn this essential material is in this elegant volume by Russell Cooper.