ABSTRACT
The complaints about macroeconomics are familiar to all. The economy is not modeled as an evolving system exhibiting emergent properties. The infinite-horizon optimizing representative agent model is not altogether representative of macroeconomics. This chapter deals with two types of mortal agents (overlapping generations) and some models with asymmetric information or externalities capable of producing a sort of coordination failures. But generally speaking these, too, tend to be subject to the same complaints. The chapter describes a set of (somewhat atypical) empirical phenomena, explains why they are not handled well by current macroeconomics, and end with a few suggestions about how they might be attacked. An overview of macroeconomics might too easily deteriorate into catalogue of models to which these complaints and reservations apply in varying combinations. The inflationary economy does not gravitate toward the use of a single index as the common unit of account.
