Macroeconomics: Principles and Applications is a straightforward, no-nonsense Principles book that emphasizes economic theory and applications. The book is a study tool for students, and the pedagogical approach and in-text features were chosen to reinforce that theme.

Robert E. Hall is a prominent applied economist. He is the Robert and Carole McNeil Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution where he conducts research on inflation, unemployment, taxation, monetary policy, and the economics of high technology. He received his Ph.D. from MIT and has taught there as well as at the University of California, Berkeley. Hall is Director of the research program on Economic Fluctuations of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Chairman of the Bureau's Committee on Business Cycle Dating, which maintains the semiofficial chronology of the U.S. business cycle. He has published numerous monographs and articles in scholarly journals, and co-authored a popular intermediate text. Hall has advised the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board on national economic policy, and has testified on numerous occasions before congressional committees. Marc Lieberman is Clinical Associate Professor of Economics at New York University. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University. Lieberman has presented his extremely popular Principles of Economics course at Harvard, Vassar, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of Hawaii, as well as at NYU, where he won the Economics Society Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is co-editor and contributor to The Road to Capitalism: Economic Transformation in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Lieberman has consulted for the Bank of America and the Educational Testing Service. In his spare time, he is a professional screenwriter. He co-wrote the script for Love Kills, a thriller that aired on the USA Cable Network, and he periodically teaches screenwriting at NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies.