Until the 1930s most economic analysis concentrated on individual firms and industries. With the GreatDepression? of the 1930s, however, and the development of the concept of national income and product statistics, the field of MacroeconomicS began to expand. The policy goals of the discipline include economic growth, price stability, full employment and the attainment of a favourable balance of payments.
One of the great challenges of recent economics has been struggles to reconcile macroeconomic and microeconomic models. RationalExpectations? Theorists such as RobertLucas? suggested (in the 1970s) that at least some traditional KeynesiaN? macroeconomic models were questionable in light of what they must implicitly assume about individual behavior.