How do you read a bank balance sheet (T account) in AP Macro?
Assets and liabilities, required and excess reserves, and how cash deposits and Fed bond purchases change the money supply, with a T account builder.
Explainers
Long form, original introductions to high intent macro topics. Each piece cites authoritative sources and links back to pillars, glossary terms, and data guides.
New: the production possibilities curve, with sliders for a point on or inside the curve and for an outward or inward shift. The money market and loanable funds explainer shows open market operations, money demand, government deficits, and crowding out. The aggregate demand and aggregate supply model is the price level and real GDP picture those rates feed into.
Studying the course in unit order? The AP Macroeconomics study hub lists the six College Board units, the graphs to draw, and the explainers on this site that teach them.
How does the reserve market work with ample reserves?
The AP Macro reserve market graph, why demand goes flat at the interest on reserve balances rate, and how the Fed moves its policy rate.
How does the foreign exchange market graph work?
Labelling the graph, what shifts currency demand and supply, the two graph rule, and the effect on net exports.
What is the balance of payments?
Current account versus financial account, how to sort transactions, and why the accounts balance.
What is a production possibilities curve?
Scarcity, opportunity cost, and the difference between a bowed out curve and a straight line, with a graph you can move.
What is the difference between the money market and the loanable funds market?
Nominal rate and the stock of money, versus the real rate and the flow of saving, with shifts for open market operations and crowding out.
What is the aggregate demand and aggregate supply model?
Why aggregate demand slopes down, how short run and long run aggregate supply differ, and an interactive graph of shocks and gaps.
What is the Phillips curve?
What it is, whether it still works, and how expectations and the natural rate fit in.
Quantitative easing explained
What QE is, how bond buying works, and how the UK and US are unwinding the stock.
Real interest rates explained
Nominal versus real rates, and why an inflation adjusted policy stance matters.
Exchange rates and purchasing power parity
FX moves, real exchange rates, and purchasing power parity.
Fiscal multipliers explained
How spending and tax changes can ripple through GDP, conditionally.
What is a recession? Definitions explained
NBER dating, GDP rules of thumb, and UK discussion norms.
What is the yield curve? Inversions explained
Treasury and gilt curves, why inversions get attention, and how to read the signal carefully.
What is the Taylor rule?
How a simple policy rate guideline links inflation and economic slack to a suggested policy rate.
CPI vs PCE: which inflation measure matters?
How US CPI and PCE differ, why the Fed often cites PCE, and how UK CPI/CPIH compares.
What is the output gap?
How economists compare actual GDP with potential output, and why the gap matters for inflation and policy.
Natural rate of unemployment
What the natural rate and NAIRU mean, how estimates move, and how UK and US readers should use them.
Okun's law
How GDP growth and unemployment often move together, with a worked arithmetic sketch and caveats.
What are M1 and M2?
What each includes in the US today, why M1 jumped in 2020, and how UK notes and coin and M4ex differ.
BEA versus ONS GDP
How US and UK GDP releases differ in units, calendars, and revision habits.
Fiscal dominance
When budget pressures constrain monetary policy, and how that differs from ordinary deficits or QE.
Headline vs Core Inflation: CPI, PCE and What Each Means
Headline counts all items. Core usually drops food and energy. How US CPI and PCE, and UK CPI and CPIH, use the split.
Trust and next steps
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Prefer the short map? Start with the six topic pillars. For series literacy, see data guides.