The field of macroeconomics is organized into many different schools of thought, with differing views on how the markets and their participants operate.

Classical economists emphasize the importance of market forces in determining economic outcomes. They believe in the efficiency of free markets and argue that government intervention often leads to inefficiencies. Key figures in classical economics include Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill.

Named after the British economist John Maynard Keynes, Keynesian economics emerged in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Keynesians advocate for government intervention in the economy to stabilize fluctuations in aggregate demand and promote full employment. They emphasize the role of fiscal policy (government spending and taxation) and monetary policy (central bank actions) in managing economic downturns.

Monetarists, led by economists like Milton Friedman, emphasize the role of money supply in influencing economic outcomes. They argue that changes in the money supply have significant impacts on inflation and economic growth. Monetarists advocate for stable and predictable increases in the money supply to promote long-term economic stability.

The New Classical school, along with the New Keynesians, is mainly built on integrating microeconomic foundations into macroeconomics to resolve the glaring theoretical contradictions between the two subjects.

The New Classical school emphasizes the importance of microeconomics and models based on that behavior. New Classical economists assume that all agents try to maximize their utility and have rational expectations, which they incorporate into macroeconomic models. New Classical economists believe that unemployment is largely voluntary and that discretionary fiscal policy destabilizes, while inflation can be controlled with monetary policy.

The New Keynesian school also attempts to add microeconomic foundations to traditional Keynesian economic theories. While New Keynesians accept that households and firms operate based on rational expectations, they still maintain that there are a variety of market failures, including sticky prices and wages. Because of this "stickiness," the government can improve macroeconomic conditions through fiscal and monetary policy.

The Austrian School is an older school of economics that is seeing some resurgence in popularity. Austrian economic theories mainly apply to microeconomic phenomena. However, like the so-called classical economists, they never strictly separated microeconomics and macroeconomics.