The Macro Pedagogy Debate: Teaching DSGE to Undergraduates Symposium

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models have become the workhorse of modern macroeconomics and the standard way to communicate ideas among applied macroeconomists. Undergraduate students, however, often remain unaware of their existence. The lack of specialized knowledge can hurt them if they decide to attend graduate school. Indeed, many first-year PhD students discover that the material they are currently learning differs significantly from what they mastered in college. But this can change. In this article, the author describes how to teach a full-fledged macroeconomics course where DSGE models take center stage. He discusses how to arrange such a course within a one-semester time frame, details the main components of instruction, and finishes with some thoughts based on his teaching experience at Macalester College.