When I look at a list of issues, how can I determine which issues are and are not macroeconomic issues?

In order to tell which issues are and are not macroeconomic issues, you have to know how to define terms about macroeconomics.  Macroeconomic issues are those that have to do with the entire economy of a given area.  This is often a country, but it can be a city, state, province, a group of countries, or the whole world.  Macroeconomic questions ask how certain events or policies will impact the overall economy.  By contrast, microeconomic...

In order to tell which issues are and are not macroeconomic issues, you have to know how to define terms about macroeconomics.  Macroeconomic issues are those that have to do with the entire economy of a given area.  This is often a country, but it can be a city, state, province, a group of countries, or the whole world.  Macroeconomic questions ask how certain events or policies will impact the overall economy.  By contrast, microeconomic issues have to do with certain industries or even with individual businesses or consumers.  As their names suggest, macroeconomic issues have to do with the big picture while microeconomic issues have to do with small bits of that larger picture.

Let us look at some examples to see what this means.  Let’s say that a researcher wonders what will happen to the market for large cars if gas prices go up.  This is a microeconomic issue because it is only concerned with specific markets, the car market and the gas market.  By contrast, imagine the researcher wants to know what will happen to the economy of Venezuela if oil prices drop below a certain point.  Since that question is mainly about a whole country’s economy (the whole Venezuelan economy is the dependent variable in the question), it is a macroeconomic issue. 

As another example, let us say that a central bank lowers interest rates.  If a researcher asks how the lower rate will affect the housing market, that is a microeconomic issue because the dependent variable in the question is a single market.  However, if the researcher asks how the lower interest rates will change the amount that all businesses in the country invest, that is a macroeconomic issue.

When you look at a list of issues, the macroeconomic issues are those that have to do with the economies of whole cities, countries, regions, or the whole world.  If the dependent variable in the question is an entire economy, the question has to do with a macroeconomic issue.