How to Learn Macroeconomics: 90 Cards on GDP, Inflation and Policy

Get GDP accounting, the four unemployment types and the two policy levers straight, and most first-year macro questions answer themselves. The Macroeconomics: GDP, Inflation, Fiscal & Monetary Policy deck (code ZK6883, 90 cards) on Flip It is built for exactly that layer — clean definitions, no diagrams, no algebra.

Eight cards from the deck

The five blocks you are learning

National accounts (cards 1–14): nominal vs real GDP, the C + I + G + NX identity, GNI, net factor income, the GDP deflator, transfer payments, net output, factor income.

Labour markets (15–21, 82–85): labour force, cyclical, frictional, structural and search unemployment, Okun's Law, efficiency wages, minimum wage, trade unions.

Inflation and money (22–28, 51–60, 86–87): deflation, price index, supply shock, the Phillips Curve, the quantity theory of money, M1 and M2, the money multiplier, reserve requirements, inflation expectations, self-fulfilling spirals.

Policy and cycles (29–42): expansionary and contractionary fiscal and monetary policy, aggregate demand and supply, recession, the four business-cycle phases, overheating, stabilisation policy.

Schools and growth (43–50, 71–81): Keynes and the General Theory (1936), effective demand, the multiplier effect, liquidity preference, the neoclassical synthesis, monetarism, productivity, capital accumulation, human capital, the short, medium and long run.

Open-economy cards (61–70) round it out: fixed vs floating exchange rates, currency unions, balance of trade, net foreign assets.

Three backs to correct

• Card 7 puts residential housing inside Consumption, and card 8 puts "labour" inside Investment. In national accounts it is the reverse of the first and simply wrong for the second: new residential construction is investment, and wages are a cost of production, never an investment component.
• "A GDP deflator of 100 = no inflation or deflation." A deflator of 100 only means you are in the base year. It says nothing about whether prices rose; inflation is the change in the deflator between two years.
• The money multiplier as 1 / reserve ratio. Worth knowing for exams, but the US reserve requirement has been 0% since March 2020 and central banks describe lending as constrained by capital and demand, not by a multiplier. Label that card "textbook model".

Two tips specific to this deck

Collapse cards 31–34 into one 2×2 grid. Expansionary/contractionary × fiscal/monetary is four cards saying one structure. Fill each cell with its tool — spending, taxes, rates, money supply — and its direction, then test yourself on the grid.

Write the numbers the deck never gives you. Exactly one card in 90 computes anything (the 1/0.20 = 5 multiplier). The CPI is never named despite a generic "price index" card, and there is no inflation-rate formula, no real vs nominal interest rate, no NAIRU by name. Add five cards: CPI, inflation rate = (P₂ − P₁)/P₁, real rate = nominal − inflation, the two-negative-quarters recession rule (a heuristic, not the NBER's method), and one worked real-GDP deflation.

Also note the tail: cards 80–90 rewind to material already covered — card 81 repeats the Keynes/Great Depression link from 43 and 49, card 83 restates frictional unemployment, card 90 restates transfer payments from card 9.

Next, pair this with Microeconomics: Supply, Demand, Markets and Game Theory and the broader Economic Concepts and Theories deck.