Welcome to the Macro Critical blog

Dear readers,

Welcome to the Macro Critical blog on Medium!

This blog is personal space to talk about the systems shaping economies, societies, technologies, and environments, and the trade-offs embedded within them.

In this publication, we cover topics such as climate change, energy, transport, trade, inequality, demographics, finance, economic measurement, and public policy. Many of these issues are deeply interconnected, yet they are often discussed in isolation. Therefore, our goal is to bridge disciplines and connect empirical evidence with broader structural questions, while keeping the topics accesible for the common reader.

The blog has two core goals:

1. Introduce general readers to macro-finance-climate topics that they usually won’t touch for various reasons, such as a lack of domain knowledge, or use to technical terms in specific that makes topics unappealing. Or simply such topics are not even present in regular policy debates, especially the discussions around national accounts, or ICP, or exchange rates but they do deeply impact our lives.
2. Make readers aware of inter-connections between seemingly unrelated topics. Or to some extent, make these connections more tangible no matter how covulated the relationship might be.

There is another underlying goal here: contemporary processess, rules, and regulations, that we observe today, have been shaped by historical events. These events took place at a certain point time reflecting economic conditions at that point in time. It is important to highlight this, since well-meaning measures might currently be outdated or open to misuse. Therefore, the blogs will keep a tacit historical-institutional perspective in place. Of course, the full scope of certain events (e.g. Bretton Woods) cannot be fully covered here with all their nuances. But if readers do find this interesting, then they can certainly find books written on these topics.

The posts are shaped by my own experience teaching these types of topics for over 20 years. In the past two decades I have also developed macro-financial models and diagnostic tools, and do have some experience interacting with bureaucrats, policymakers, multilateral organizations from across the globe. Even today, it it still striking how often we hear or (mis)use concepts that we do not fully understand. Or how much we overlook the enormous efforts required to produce some of the numbers we take for granted.

In recent posts, we have explored topics ranging from greenhouse gas emissions and CO₂-equivalents to exchange rates, purchasing power parity (PPP), and the International Comparison Program (ICP). Other articles examine how the System of National Accounts (SNA) structures modern economic statistics, how institutional sectors organize economic activity, how inflation and price indices are constructed, and how financial products and markets interact with the real economy. Some posts focus on the institutions and governance structures shaping global development and climate policy. These range from COP negotiations and carbon accounting frameworks to trade systems, technological transitions, and sustainability targets.

The idea behind “macrocriticality” is simple: many of the most important challenges of our time are not only technical or political, but systemic. Understanding them requires thinking across disciplinary silos and recognizing the interconnections between economic, social, technological, and environmental systems. This blog is an attempt to connect some of those dots.

If you enjoy the publication, please clap, share, and follow! Your support helps the blog grow. We also welcome suggestions for topics you would like to see covered in future posts.

Chees,

Asjad

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash