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Macroeconomic Policy (macroeconomic + policy)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	53%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	43%

Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences

General & Introductory Development Studies	39%
General & Introductory Political Science	33%

Selected Abstracts

ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF FISCAL POLICY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF MACROECONOMIC POLICY

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2009
Philip Arestis
This paper demonstrates that fiscal policy is an effective and essential instrument of stabilisation macroeconomic policy. This is particularly so if it is co-ordinated with monetary policy, especially in the current worldwide economic situation. [source]

Macroeconomic Policies to Address Informality: A Two-pronged Strategy to Foster Dynamic Transformations that Reduce Informality

IDS BULLETIN, Issue 2 2008
Radhika Lal
First page of article [source]

How Should Macroeconomic Policy Respond to Foreign Financial Crises?,

ECONOMIC PAPERS: A JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMICS AND POLICY, Issue 2 2010
Anthony J. Makin
F31; F33; F41 This paper examines the impact of global financial crises on the Australian economy and how monetary and fiscal policy may be used to manage economic downturns that result. To do so, it presents a straightforward analytical framework incorporating financial wealth, exchange rate expectations, foreign demand and interest rate risk to analyse the key role played by the nominal exchange rate in insulating national income from the worst effects of foreign financial crises. In the event the economy is not fully insulated by exchange rate depreciation, it shows that, in principle, monetary policy is a superior instrument to fiscal stimulus for restoring aggregate demand to the full employment level. Since monetary policy is not handicapped by numerous problems that render fiscal stimulus less effective, it should normally be considered a sufficient instrument on its own. [source]

Activist Macroeconomic Policy, Election Effects and the Formation of Expectations: Evidence from OECD Economies

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 2 2000
David Kiefer
We examine the explanatory power of a political,business cycle theory in which governments practice short-run policy to lessen the impact of exogenous shocks. Governments have ideological objectives with respect to macroeconomic performance, but are constrained by an augmented Phillips curve. The most prominent version, the rational partisan model, incorporates forward-looking expectations. This model can be compared to a competing model based on backward-looking expectations. Alesina and Roubini's recent advocacy of the rational model uses OECD data. Our reconsideration of the same data, updated to 1995, suggests that the adaptive expectations version offers a better explanation than the rational one. [source]

Macroeconomic Policy, Labour Markets and Growth in Developed and Developing Countries

IDS BULLETIN, Issue 2 2008
John Toye
First page of article [source]

The Construction of the Myth of Survival

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2007
Mercedes González de la Rocha
ABSTRACT A myth has come into being that the poor household/family is able to survive in spite of a lack of resources and the presence of macroeconomic policies that foster unemployment and poverty. It has an accompanying fable that tells of how the poor manage to implement survival strategies that are based on their endless capacity to work, to consume less and to be part of mutual help networks. This myth has become a useful tool for policy makers as they design more aggressive neoliberal economic adjustment policies. This contribution examines anthropological and sociological insights regarding the life of the poor and the organization of their households, in which women's paid and unpaid work is an integral part. Through the lens of a researcher in the field of urban poverty and household organization, the article re-examines the fable of the good survivor. Evidence debunks the myth, showing that the optimistic message of this fable does not match with the realities of the impact of economic change on women's lives. But the myth is sustained, as this more negative story is not one that supra-national policy actors want to hear. [source]

Analysing Macro-Poverty Linkages of External Liberalisation: Gaps, Achievements and Alternatives

DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 3 2005
Bernhard G. Gunter
CGE modelling has dominated analysis of the impact of external liberalisation on poverty. This article provides a structuralist critique of standard neo-classical CGE models. It highlights five sets of gaps and partial achievements in the modelling of issues affecting the poverty impact of macroeconomic policies: duality and structural rigidities; efficiency gains and quota rents; the investment and savings specification; the nature of public expenditures; and the modelling of financial fragility, risk premia and issues of credibility. It outlines a model that makes it possible to analyse more plausible stories about the impact of both current and capital account liberalisation and questions the realism of existing approaches to ex-ante poverty impact assessment. [source]

Lifelong Learning in the European Union: whither the Lisbon Strategy?

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, Issue 3 2005
HYWEL CERI JONES
This article traces the Lisbon strategy back to the White Paper issued by President Jacques Delors in 1993 on Growth, Competitiveness, and Jobs as the launching point for the structural reform agenda needed to turn around the massive unemployment crisis and proposing a combination of policies for the structural reform of the labour market and stability-oriented macroeconomic policies designed to stimulate economic growth. The centrality of education and training in the Lisbon strategy is seen as key to the lifelong chances of every citizen linked to the need for Europe to compete on the basis of a knowledge-based economy if it is to maintain its high social standards. Describing the first years of the Lisbon strategy as ,a stuttering start', the mid-term stock-taking which offered European leaders the opportunity to fine-tune or radically modify the strategy is analysed. The article highlights the paradox that, although human capital is claimed to be Europe's most precious resource, there is inadequate focus on the weakest aspects of current systems. It also focuses on policy and financial levers which need to be mobilised within Member States as well as the implications for national budgets. It suggests the prioritisation of a small number of areas on which to concentrate efforts and echoes the Council calling for a ,quantum leap' in the ambition of the EU to ensure that the necessary follow-up is given to meet the challenges. Finally, a strong argument is put forward to take steps to move towards a unified set of proposals for lifelong learning. [source]

Liberalized capital markets, state autonomy, and European monetary union

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2003
Erik Jones
The conventional wisdom is that capital market integration and now monetary union have limited the options available to macroeconomic policy makers in Europe. The question considered here, therefore, is why many prominent Europeans insist that monetary union is a rational response to capital market integration. Monetary union eliminates exchange rate volatility , but only at a cost in terms of tightening the constraints on macroeconomic policy. Using a combination of macroeconomic theory and (descriptive) statistical analysis of European performance, I find that: capital market integration has increased macroeconomic flexibility through a mitigation of the current account constraint; European states have combined macroeconomic policies in a manner that has taken advantage of greater flexibility on the current account; the cost of such flexibility in terms of the impact of financial volatility on the real economy manifests differently in different countries; and monetary union both enhances flexibility on the current account and mitigates financial volatility. [source]

How to exit from fixed exchange rate regimes?

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FINANCE & ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2008
Ahmet Atil A
Abstract This paper improves upon the recently developed literature on exits from fixed exchange rate regimes in three ways: (1) It allows for two indicators for post-exit macroeconomic conditions, the change in the exchange rate and the change in the output gap; (2) it tests whether the distinction between orderly and disorderly exit is statistically justified, and concludes that it is not; (3) it deals with the sample selection problem. The results, subject to extensive sensitivity analysis, suggest that post-exits are better when depegging occurs in good macroeconomic conditions , an unnatural move for most policymakers , when world interest rates decline and in the presence of capital controls. Importantly, ,good' macroeconomic policies do not seem to help with post-exit performance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

International tourism and economic development in South Africa: a Granger causality test

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH, Issue 2 2010
Oludele A. Akinboade
Abstract One of the major objectives of macroeconomic policies in many developing countries is sustained economic growth, and South Africa has been striving to achieve and maintain this in various ways. One of these is through international tourism. Although international tourism contributes to the growth of many economies, it is in turn, impacted by growth in many developed countries. Real gross domestic product (GDP), international tourism earnings, real effective exchange rate and exports were analysed within a multivariate vector auto regressive model using annual data covering 1980,2005. The main focus of this study therefore was to demonstrate the direction of causality between international tourism earnings and long-run economic growth of South Africa, among other variables, using Granger causality analysis. The result obtained showed a unidirectional causality running from international tourism earnings to real GDP, both in the short run and in the long run. The error correction mechanism carried out also supported this causality. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Mumbai's Development Mafias: Globalization, Organized Crime and Land Development

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2008
LIZA WEINSTEIN
Abstract For over a decade, researchers have analyzed the effects of liberalization and globalization on urban development, considering the local political implications of shifts at the national and global scales. Taking the case of Mumbai, this article examines how the past 15 years of political reforms in India have reshaped property markets and the politics of land development. Among the newly empowered actors, local criminal syndicates, often with global connections, have seized political opportunities created by these shifts to gain influence over land development. The rise of Mumbai's organized criminal activity in the 1950s was closely linked to India's macroeconomic policies, with strict regulation of imports fuelling the growth of black market smuggling. Liberalization and deregulation since the early 1990s have diminished demand for smuggled consumer goods and criminal syndicates have since diversified their operations. With skyrocketing real estate prices in the 1990s, bolstered by global land speculation, the mafia began investing in property development. Supported by an illicit nexus of politicians, bureaucrats and the police, the mafia has emerged as a central figure in Mumbai's land development politics. The article examines the structural shifts that facilitated the criminalization of land development and the implications of mafia involvement in local politics. Résumé Depuis plus d'une décennie, les chercheurs ont analysé les effets de la libéralisation et de la mondialisation sur l'aménagement urbain en étudiant les implications politiques locales de transformations effectuées à l'échelle nationale et planétaire. Prenant le cas de Mumbai, cet article examine comment les réformes politiques des quinze dernières années en Inde ont reconfiguré les marchés immobiliers et les politiques d'aménagement foncier. Parmi les nouveaux acteurs, les syndicats du crime locaux, opérant souvent dans des réseaux internationaux, ont saisi les occasions politiques créées par ces changements pour gagner en influence sur l'aménagement foncier. A Mumbai, l'activité accrue du crime organisé dans les années 1950 était étroitement liée aux politiques macroéconomiques de l'Inde, une réglementation stricte des importations alimentant l'essor de la contrebande sur le marché noir. Depuis le début des années 1990, libéralisation et déréglementation ont réduit la demande pour les biens de consommation de contrebande, poussant les syndicats du crime à diversifier leurs opérations. Face à la montée en flèche des prix de l'immobilier dans les années 1990, aidée par la spéculation foncière mondiale, la mafia a investi dans la promotion immobilière. Soutenue par un réseau illégal de politiciens, bureaucrates et policiers, elle est donc devenue un personnage central des politiques d'urbanisme à Mumbai. L'article étudie les transformations structurelles qui ont facilité la criminalisation du secteur foncier, et les implications de la présence de la mafia dans la politique locale. [source]

Can Remittances Spur Development?

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 1 2006
A Critical Survey
The increasing volume of global remittances has impressed policymakers and social scientists alike. Besides outpacing official development assistance and private capital flows, remittances have proven markedly stable and counter-cyclical. They represent an essential nondebt creating, safety-net vehicle administered by extended families and local communities rather than provincial and national governments. This essay surveys the recent pattern of remittances and critically examines the theoretical and empirical literature on their determinants and welfare impact. The argument is made that the developmental contribution of remittances can be significantly enhanced through complementary macroeconomic policies in labor exporting countries and financial innovations in remittance transmission. Enhanced policy coordination on temporary transnational worker migration,as facilitated by Mode 4 of the General Agreement on Trade in Services,can prove instrumental in helping remittances offset the traditional brain drain besetting developing economies. [source]

The Old and the New Politics of International Financial Stability

JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 5 2009
LOUIS W. PAULY
The cross-border financial crisis that began in the United States in the summer of 2007 tested a 30-year experiment in international integration. In the background were expanding macroeconomic imbalances that leading states had neglected to address. Spawned by imprudence and regulatory failures, the crisis soon deepened and the collaborative impulse that might have prompted earlier and more fundamental macro-policy action became focused on emergency management. Ad hoc policy co-ordination ensued as liquidity was injected into turbulent markets and troubled financial intermediaries were recapitalized or reorganized. The collective performance was inelegant, not least inside the European Union. The crisis shed a harsh spotlight on the weak fiscal foundations of the Union and on the now-pressing need for collaborative adjustments in national macroeconomic policies. Since overt political innovation on such matters remains difficult, both within Europe and globally, the crisis underlined the crucial importance of much better collaborative instruments for the oversight and stabilization of integrating financial markets. [source]

The Millennium Development Goals: the pledge of world leaders to end poverty will not be met with business as usual,

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 7 2004
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr
This article reviews the prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It argues that these goals will not be achieved by the target date of 2015 unless new action is taken by both rich and poor countries. It shows that current trends sharply contrast countries on their way to meeting the goals and those in a poverty trap. Crisis proportions have been reached in deterioration of life expectancy and falling incomes, but also in a wide range of other indicators in countries such as Zambia as well as Nepal. The origins of this crisis are not just poor governance or poor macroeconomic policies, but rather the difficulties of competing in global markets. A priority for these countries is to invest in basic education and health, infrastructure, agriculture and manufacturing. Rich countries have fallen seriously behind in living up to their promises to increase aid, debt relief and access to their markets for exports from developing countries,with the welcome but still inadequate increase in aid to reach the 0.7 per cent GDP target, with the collapse of trade talks at Cancun, slow implementation of HIPC, and slow progress in implementation of TRIPS provision for access to technology. Business as usual will not be enough to meet the goals and new action is urgently needed to achieve the goals. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND INEQUALITY: BRAZIL, 1983,94

THE DEVELOPING ECONOMIES, Issue 1 2009
Manoel BITTENCOURT
D31; E31; O11; O54 We examine how poor macroeconomic performance, mainly in terms of high rates of inflation, affected earnings inequality in the 1980s and early 1990s in Brazil. The results, based initially on aggregate time series, and then on sub-national panel time-series data and analysis, show that the extreme inflation, combined with an imperfect process of financial adaptation and incomplete indexation coverage, had a regressive and significant impact on inequality. The implication of the results is that sound macroeconomic policies, which keep inflation low and stable in the long run, should be a necessary first step of any policy package implemented to alleviate inequality in Brazil. [source]

Measuring Ethnic Fractionalization in Africa

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2004
Daniel N. Posner
In most studies of the impact of ethnic diversity on economic growth, diversity is hypothesized to affect growth through its effect on macroeconomic policies. This article shows that most measures of ethnic diversity (including the commonly used ELF measure) are inappropriate for testing this hypothesis. This is because they are constructed from enumerations of ethnic groups that include all of the ethnographically distinct groups in a country irrespective of whether or not they engage in the political competition whose effects on macroeconomic policymaking are being tested. I present a new index of ethnic fractionalization based on an accounting of politically relevant ethnic groups in 42 African countries. I employ this measure (called PREG, for Politically Relevant Ethnic Groups) to replicate Easterly and Levine's influential article on Africa's "growth tragedy." I find that PREG does a much better job of accounting for the policy-mediated effects of ethnic diversity on economic growth in Africa than does ELF. [source]

Evaluating the Relative Impact of Fiscal Incentives and Trade Policies on the Returns to Manufacturing in Taiwan, 1955,1995,

ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 1 2007
Glenn P. Jenkins
H25; F13; O12 In the present paper, an integrated cash flow model is developed to examine the relative impact of tax incentives, financial subsidies, and macroeconomic variables on the profitability of industrial investments. It allows for the variables in the model to interact with each other. An application of the model is carried out for Taiwan, which has implemented a variety of fiscal incentives over the past 40 years. The principal policy conclusion is that trade and macroeconomic policies are much more important than income tax incentives or subsidized finance policies in determining the success of Taiwan's industrialization process. The effects of all of the fiscal incentives are found to be much smaller than those of the trade policies or the fundamental trends in macroeconomic variables such as the movement of the real exchange rate and the real wage rate. [source]

ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF FISCAL POLICY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF MACROECONOMIC POLICY

Trade liberalisation and CAP reform in the EU

ECONOMIC OUTLOOK, Issue 1 2006
Article first published online: 26 JAN 200
Europe has underperformed relative to its peers and to its own previous performance over the last two decades. That underperformance reflects a range of factors, from structural rigidities in labour and capital markets, to inappropriate macroeconomic policy. But one set of policy measures that could contribute to improved economic performance in the future is trade liberalisation and reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This article examines the benefits that could accrue to the UK, EU and global economies from the liberalisation of trade in goods and from the replacement of the current CAP with other, more productive forms of spending. It finds that the current barriers to trade in the EU, and the resources dedicated to the maintenance of the CAP, are set to cost the EU some 2% of GDP by 2015 if they remain in place. Moreover, this cost falls disproportionately on the poorer members of society. [source]

Fiscal Policy in the UK

ECONOMIC OUTLOOK, Issue 3 2001
Brian Henry
Although the conduct of macroeconomic policy in the UK has been very good by historical standards, Brian Henry argues in this article that there are shortcomings in the framework which mean it is less well suited to adverse shocks than it should be. He recommends that an extension of the present framework be made setting up a committee charged with the independent assessment of fiscal policy. This would help mitigate the lack of balance between monetary and fiscal policy which is evident at present. Fiscal judgements based on cyclical adjustments are too heavily dependant on domestic factors and underestimate the effects of the cycle on revenues. In consequence, fiscal policy, rather than supporting monetary, has been loosened and this indirectly accounts for the continuing strength of the exchange rate. [source]

Sterling and the Euro

ECONOMIC OUTLOOK, Issue 1 2000
Erik Britton
The question of whether and when sterling should join Economic and Monetary Union is likely to be one of the key battlegrounds in the next election campaign. In this article, Erik Britton and Scott Livermore argue that there is no clear economic case in favour of sterling's entry to EMU. However, if as the government asserts , the political will to join exists, steps could be taken now, adjusting the mix of macroeconomic policy, to ensure that convergence was likely shortly after the next election. [source]

Liberalized capital markets, state autonomy, and European monetary union

Can macroeconomic policy stimulate private investment in South Africa?

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 7 2008
New insights from aggregate, manufacturing sector-level evidence
Abstract This study explores the determinants of investment using both aggregated industry-level data and disaggretated data on 27 sub-sectors of the manufacturing sector for the period 1970,2001. According to the results in this study, the government has potentially powerful means at its disposal to stimulate private investment. In particular, a domestic demand stimulus and public investment expansion will produce large gains in private investment. While the direct effects of lowering the interest rate appear to be quantitatively small, indirect effects operating notably through domestic demand and cheaper credit are likely to be large. The evidence in this study also indicates that it is important to minimise exchange rate instability to encourage investment. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Gender equity and globalization: macroeconomic policy for developing countries

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 8 2006
Stephanie Seguino
Abstract This paper reviews the evidence of gender effects of globalization in developing economies. It then outlines a set of macroeconomic and trade policies to promote gender equity in the distribution of resources. The evidence suggests that while liberalization has expanded women's access to employment, the long-term goal of transforming gender inequalities remains unmet and appears unattainable without regulation of capital, and a reorientation and expansion of the state's role in funding public goods and providing a social safety net. This paper sets forth some general principles that can produce greater gender equality, premised on shifting economies from profit-led, export-oriented to wage-led, full-employment economies. The framework is Kaleckian in its focus on the relationship between the gender distribution of income and macroeconomic outcomes. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

The Role of Uncertainty in Investment: An Examination of Competing Investment Models Using Commercial Real Estate Data

REAL ESTATE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2000
A. Steven Holland
Neoclassical investment decision criteria suggest that only the systematic component of total risk affects the rate of investment, as channeled through the built-asset price. Alternatively, option-based investment models suggest a direct role for total uncertainty in investment decisionmaking. To sort out uncertainty's role in investment, we specify and empirically estimate a structural model of asset-market equilibrium. Commercial real estate time-series data with two distinct measures of asset price and uncertainty are used to assess the competing investment models. Empirical results generally favor predictions of the option-based model and hence suggest that irreversibility and delay are important considerations to investors. Our findings also have implications for macroeconomic policy and for forecasts of cyclical investment activity. [source]

A Framework for Unifying Formal and Empirical Analysis

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2010
Jim Granato
An important disconnect exists between the current use of formal modeling and applied statistical analysis. In general, a lack of linkage between the two can produce statistically significant parameters of ambiguous origin that, in turn, fail to assist in falsifying theories and hypotheses. To address this scientific challenge, a framework for unification is proposed. Methodological unification leverages the mutually reinforcing properties of formal and applied statistical analysis to produce greater transparency in relating theory to test. This framework for methodological unification, or what has been referred to as the empirical implications of theoretical models (EITM), includes (1) connecting behavioral (formal) and applied statistical concepts, (2) developing behavioral (formal) and applied statistical analogues of these concepts, and (3) linking and evaluating the behavioral (formal) and applied statistical analogues. The elements of this EITM framework are illustrated with examples from voting behavior, macroeconomic policy and outcomes, and political turnout. [source]

Give Macroeconomic Stability and Growth in Russia a Chance

THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 2 2000
Brian Pinto
This paper identifies and investigates conceptual and empirical links among Russia's disappointing growth performance of the mid-1990s, its costly and eventually unsuccessful stabilization, the macroeconomic meltdown of 1998 and the spectacular rise of non-payments. Non-payments developed into a system that flourished in an atmosphere of fundamental inconsistency between a macroeconomic policy geared at sharp disinflation and a microeconomic policy of bailing-out enterprises through soft budget constraints. It embodies a large volume of untargeted, implicit subsidies in the order of 7,10 per cent of GDP, which has stifled growth, contributed to the 1998 meltdown through its impact on public debt and made at best a questionable contribution to equity. The overwhelming priority at this point is to dismantle this system, thereby promoting enterprise restructuring and growth (by hardening budget constraints) and medium-term macroeconomic stability (by reducing the size of the subsidies). [source]

INVESTIGATING OKUN's LAW BY THE STRUCTURAL BREAK WITH THRESHOLD APPROACH: EVIDENCE FROM CANADA,

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 5 2005
HO-CHUAN (RIVER) HUANG
This study proposes a structural change with threshold approach to re-evaluate the empirical validity of Okun's law using data from Canada. Based on the Hodrick,Prescott and band-pass filtered data, we find strong support of structural change as well as threshold nonlinearity. This suggests that the use of purely linear specifications for analyzing Okun's law may lead to misleading results. The implications of the empirical results for macroeconomic policy are also briefly discussed. [source]

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES MEETS MILTON FRIEDMAN AND EDMOND PHELPS: THE RANGE VERSUS THE NATURAL RATE IN AUSTRALIA, 1965:4 TO 2003:3

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 3 2006
JENNY N. LYE
In this paper we compare the estimates of the range model in Lye and McDonald (2005a) with estimates of a natural rate model. We find that the range model is superior to the natural rate model according to econometric criteria and economic plausibility. Our estimates of the range model suggest that a significantly lower rate of unemployment is obtainable at the current time by aggregate demand policy, indeed a rate of 3.1 per cent for 2003:3 compared with about 6.5 per cent for the natural rate model. Thus we conclude that basing macroeconomic policy on the natural rate model would underrate the possibilities for economic welfare in Australia. [source]