macroeconomics

The standard set of business-cycle indicators — leading, coincident, lagging — what each measures, the structural information content of the yield curve, the difference between NBER and technical recession definitions, and how to combine signals into a coherent cyclical picture.

How fiscal policy (taxation, spending, deficits) and monetary policy (rates, balance sheet) act on the economy through different channels, how they interact, what the debt-sustainability condition r < g implies, and where fiscal dominance constrains the central bank.

The conceptual difference between real and nominal quantities, how the Fisher equation links them, why real interest rates drive investment decisions while nominal rates appear in contracts, and the systematic mistakes that come from confusing the two.

The instruments a modern central bank uses to influence the economy — policy rate, open-market operations, reserve requirements, lender-of-last-resort facilities, quantitative easing, and forward guidance — and the transmission channels through which each affects inflation and employment.

How inflation is measured (CPI, PCE, GDP deflator), the demand-pull and cost-push mechanisms, why the modern Phillips curve depends on inflation expectations, and the structural reason 'anchored' expectations matter so much to outcomes.

The functional definition of money, the distinction between base money and broad money, how the banking system creates the latter from the former, and why the quantity equation (MV = PQ) relates money to prices only through variables that themselves move.