Issue 33, September 2023

For several decades now, the interest rate has been the main instrument of monetary policy. Even the new monetary policy instruments that emerged in the aftermath of the Great Recession operate through their effects on interest rates. This paper makes a proposal to explain the determination of interest rates in intermediate macroeconomics courses. It covers a broad set of determinants-both monetary policy (conventional and unconventional) and exogenous-and helps to understand the operation of monetary policy both before and after the great recession. The proposal can be attached as a module to a standard explanatory model of income and inflation determinations where it is assumed that the interest rate is the instrument of monetary policy.

In the present study, the implementation of a Flipped Classroom approach is demonstrated in fourth-year and first-year students at the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Huelva, respectively. To do this, we relied on a reading by Daron Acemoğlu on inequality and an episode of The Simpsons that addresses a cross-cutting theme. After completing the activity, a questionnaire was administered to gather students' perceptions regarding the implementation of this teaching strategy. Finally, decision trees were used to characterize the preferences and perceptions of the students based on the usefulness of the strategy in the subject, the usefulness of the strategy in the topic, and the effort dedicated. The results obtained indicate that age is a defining factor, as well as gender. The data obtained for young men (first-year students) are particularly interesting, as they have a more positive perception of the use of this activity.

This paper reviews Diane Coyle's "Markets, State, and People: Economics for Public Policy". Although it is a text designed for non-specialists, it is a highly valuable and interesting work for use in an undergraduate course on Public Sector Economics. The book offers a broad, systematic, rigorous and illustrative overview of the main issues related to the role of the public sector in the economy. The exposition of the theoretical foundations is combined with the consideration of situations and cases taken from reality. Unlike traditional orthodox approaches, the market and authority do not appear as opposing instances, necessarily excluding each other, but can complement each other in an attempt to improve social welfare. The existence of failures is not exclusive to the private sector, within an approach that starts from a view that does not a priori grant primacy to the market or to the public sector.