			Home About us Contact

Policy Actions (policy + action)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	56%
Humanities and Social Sciences	37%

Selected Abstracts

The Lag from Monetary Policy Actions to Inflation: Friedman Revisited

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 3 2001
Nicoletta Batini
This paper updates and extends Friedman's (1972) evidence on the lag between monetary policy actions and the response of inflation. Our evidence is based on UK and US data for the period 1953,2001 on money growth rates, inflation and interest rates, as well as annual data on money growth and inflation. We reaffirm Friedman's result that it takes over a year before monetary policy actions have their peak effect on inflation. This result has persisted despite numerous changes in monetary policy arrangements in both countries. Similarly, advances in information processing and in financial market sophistication do not appear to have substantially shortened the lag. The empirical evaluation of dynamic general equilibrium models needs to be extended to include an assessment of these models' ability to account for the monetary transmission lags found in the data. [source]

What Happens to the State in Conflict?: Political Analysis as a Tool for Planning Humanitarian Assistance

DISASTERS, Issue 4 2000
Lionel Cliffe
It is now part of received wisdom that humanitarian assistance in conflict and post-conflict situations may be ineffective or even counterproductive in the absence of an informed understanding of the broader political context in which so-called ,complex political emergencies' (CPEs) occur. Though recognising that specific cases have to be understood in their own terms, this article offers a framework for incorporating political analysis in policy design. It is based on a programme of research on a number of countries in Africa and Asia over the last four years. It argues that the starting-point should be an analysis of crises of authority within contemporary nation-states which convert conflict (a feature of all political systems) into violent conflict; of how such conflict may in turn generate more problems for, or even destroy, the state; of the deep-rooted political, institutional and developmental legacies of political violence; and of the difficulties that complicate the restoration of legitimate and effective systems of governance after the ,termination' of conflict. It then lists a series of questions which such an analysis would need to ask , less in order to provide a comprehensive check-list than to uncover underlying political processes and links. It is hoped these may be used not only to understand the political dynamics of emergencies, but also to identify what kinds of policy action should and should not be given priority by practitioners. [source]

Perceiving Rogue States: The Use of the "Rogue State" Concept by U.S. Foreign Policy Elites

FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 4 2007
K. P. O'Reilly
In the aftermath of the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy dialogue has shifted from its half century focus dominated by the superpower struggle with the Soviet Union to the challenges presented by so-called "rogue states." For many observers, however, the term "rogue state" is viewed as problematic failing to providing either a clear picture of who and what constitutes a rogues state, or, perhaps more importantly, the ramification of this term on U.S. policy action. In examining the public statements of key U.S. foreign policy decision makers over the course of 1993 to 2004, this paper offers insights as to the perceptions which manifest the "rogue" stereotype as exhibited by statements on the policies and behaviors associated with rogue states. What is revealed is a relatively fixed and stable image over time as held by key decisions-makers with similar unity expressed as to policy prescriptions. Combining perceptions of power capabilities and cultural judgments unique to this rogue stereotype, the rogue image presents a challenge to U.S. strategy demanding attention to the future threat posed by these states while also constraining policy options. [source]

,McJobs', ,good jobs' and skills: job-seekers' attitudes to low-skilled service work

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 2 2005
Colin Lindsay
This article focuses on unemployed job-seekers' attitudes towards entry-level jobs in three areas of the service sector , retail, hospitality and call-centre work. The article examines whether job-seekers are reluctant to pursue these opportunities, and provides an analysis of the motives of those ruling out service work. A range of potential barriers is discussed, including the extent to which job-seekers perceive the service economy as offering only so-called ,McJobs', low-skilled, low-paid jobs with few opportunities for development. However, the article also focuses on perceived skills mismatches, with some job-seekers arguably over-qualified for entry-level service jobs, while others consider themselves to lack the necessary ,soft' skills. The analysis is based on interviews with 220 unemployed people in Glasgow. The article concludes that policy action may be required to encourage job seekers to consider a broader range of vacancies and to provide tailored training in partnership with service employers. On the demand side, service employers must address the need for entry-level positions that offer realistic salaries, decent work conditions and opportunities for progression and development. [source]

Tourism demand response by residents of Latin American countries

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH, Issue 1 2009
Manuel Vanegas Sr
Abstract A general-to-specific methodology was used to build international tourism demand models by residents from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela to Aruba. We seek to evaluate demand parameters, especially elasticity values, which were disaggregated on a country-to-country basis. We also aim to learn more about the structure and important variables and investigate the process of adjustment. The study has provided new and compelling evidence that, in the short run, residents in developing countries respond rationally and substantially to economic stimulus. The short-run income elasticity ranges from the low of 1.52 for Venezuela to the high of 2.34 for Argentina. These results indicate that Aruba will benefit differently from income increases in these four Latin American countries. The coefficients of the price variable had the expected negative signs, inelastic in the short-run for all countries but significant at the 5% level for Venezuela only. Any deliberate effort to expand tourist arrivals will require a much larger decline in prices than would be the case in the presence of short-run elastic response. The adjustment elasticity, being less than one, suggests that a period of more than one year is required for Latin American residents to fully adjust their tourism decisions in response to demand shocks. This study would seem to provide some useful information about international tourism demand from developing to developing countries that could form a very good and solid basis for analyses and policy action. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

An analysis on the subjective perception of policy action on peripherality: A comparative assessment in accessible and peripheral areas of six countries of the EU,

REGIONAL SCIENCE POLICY AND PRACTICE, Issue 2 2009
Joan Noguera
peripherality; regional development; policy analysis Abstract The paper presents an analysis of the subjective perception of the policy efficiency on peripherality in 12 regions of six countries of the EU. In each country two regions are selected: one peripheral but relatively dynamic and another accessible but relatively lagging. Public action conditions a range of processes and activities that continuously influence the intensity and direction of development. It can be part of the new factors of territorial development (NFTD) building up or hindering peripherality. The paper has the following aims: to identify what generic types of measures are believed to be more efficient for development; to analyse which measures (spatial or aspatial) are considered more important for development; to rank different NFTD according to preferences of interviewed experts; to identify whether there are differences between accessible and peripheral areas in policy preferences and needs; and to define which influences national contexts. A minimum of 5 experts per study area have been interviewed for this analysis. [source]

Climate change: a rational choice politics view,

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL & RESOURCE ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2009
Geoffrey Brennan
Reduction in carbon dioxide emissions constitutes a global public good; and hence there will be strong incentives for countries to free ride in the provision of CO2 emission reductions. In the absence of more or less binding international agreements, we would expect carbon emissions to be seriously excessive, and climate change problems to be unsolvable. Against this obvious general point, we observe many countries acting unilaterally to introduce carbon emission policies. That is itself an explanatory puzzle, and a source of possible hope. Both aspects are matters of ,how politics works', i.e. ,public choice' problems are central. The object of this paper is to explain the phenomenon of unilateral policy action and to evaluate the grounds for ,hope'. One aspect of the explanation lies in the construction of policy instruments that redistribute strategically in favour of relevant interests. Another is the ,expressive' nature of voting and the expressive value of environmental concerns. Both elements , elite interests and popular (expressive) opinion , are quasi-constraints on politically viable policy. However, the nature of expressive concerns is such that significant reductions in real GDP are probably not sustainable in the long term , which suggests that much of the CO2 reduction action will be limited to modest reductions of a largely token character. In that sense, the grounds for hope are, although not non-existent, decidedly thin. [source]

Discourses and Ethics: The Social Construction of British Foreign Policy

FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 4 2006
JAMIE GASKARTH
The last decade has given rise to a wealth of literature on the ethics of British foreign policy. However, much of this has focused on a few narrow issues based around specific policy actions. As such, it has largely been reactive and mirrored governmental attitudes to the possibilities in foreign policy and the constraints under which decisions are made. Important issues, such as how the concepts of foreign policy and ethics have been described and enacted historically in Britain, the political effects of these past readings, and how the idea of discussing ethics should be so controversial, are underexplored. To investigate these naturalized understandings, this article conducts a discourse analysis of the articulation of foreign policy in Hansard over the last century. In doing so, it seeks to explore how past expressions of foreign policy and ethics privilege certain ways of thinking about policy and exclude others through their modes of description. The effect of these structures, it is argued, is to suppress democratic dissent and individual accountability and marginalize discussion on the (contestable) ethical basis of policy making and policy behavior. [source]

Some Thoughts on Monetary Targeting vs.

GERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2001
Inflation Targeting
We offer some empirical evidence on the likely scale of control and indicator problems surrounding alternative monetary targets and a direct inflation target. The links between monetary policy actions and inflation are estimated in dynamic linear models using the Kalman filter. We compare alternative intermediate-target and final-target monetary strategies using German data from the end of the Bretton Woods system until 1997. The estimation results show that broad money dominates narrow money as an intermediate target, while control problems involved in targeting broad money are larger than for direct inflation targets. [source]

Why Fiscal Stimulus is Likely to Work

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 1 2009
Antonio Fatás
We provide an overview of the effectiveness of fiscal policy actions by summarizing evidence from empirical and theoretical studies. Empirically, expansionary policy is found to have output multipliers greater than one. Given current economic conditions, we argue that the fiscal cost of not stabilizing the economy is likely to be much higher than the cost of a deficit that helps the economy go faster towards a recovery path. [source]

The Lag from Monetary Policy Actions to Inflation: Friedman Revisited

Satellite communications: the contribution of the 5th framework programme and future perspectives

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, Issue 1 2004
Bernard Barani
Abstract The telecommunication sector is of key importance for the European economy. Digitization, secure broadband access and mobility are expected to shift an ever-growing proportion of the economy on line, thus creating new markets and business opportunities. With the eEurope 2002 and eEurope 2005 initiatives, the European Union has initiated a number of policy actions aiming at favouring the rapid introduction of innovative communication systems, services and applications. Research and development, as supported under the IST programme of the Union, is closely associated to the overall policy picture. The IST programme is notably instrumental in supporting, with a longer-term approach, key policy orientations such as the pervasive introduction of low cost broadband access, introduction of advanced mobile systems, or migration of networks towards the next generation of Internet protocol, IPv6. Satellite communication form an integral part of this diversified communication landscape, and has also been significantly supported under the 5th Framework Programme. Even if the problematic of the satcom industry are to some extent similar to those of the terrestrial players (e.g. catalysing take up of broadband and advanced mobile markets), the strategies followed by the satcom sector differ from those followed by the terrestrial players. This paper review the current technological approaches of the satcom industry, their relevance in the context of the policy goals of the Union, and how they have been supported under the IST programme. It also introduces briefly how co-ordination with ESA work has been achieved, and the perspectives for further support, notably under the now starting 6th Framework Programme. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

From policy lessons to policy actions: motivation to take evaluation seriously

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2004
Gustavo Gordillo
The purpose of this article is to analyse the institutional aspects of creating effective systems for monitoring and evaluations (M&E) in government-led rural development efforts in developing countries. We argue that the ultimate challenge of creating effective M&E systems for public policy is not only related to the supply of information and the delivery of new knowledge to policy makers, but more importantly to their demand for lessons learnt about the effects of earlier policies. The challenge, then, is for governments to construct institutional arrangements that support the transformation of policy lessons into policy actions. This article shows that the likelihood of this transformation is closely related to the capacity of institutions to deliver mechanisms for downward accountability and processes for organisational learning. We add to earlier work in this area by considering the conditions under which such a transformation process is more or less likely, given the severe power and information asymmetries that characterise the institutional context of many developing countries' national governments. We use the tools of institutional analysis to examine the incentive structures of the actors involved in two concrete field settings, and assess to what extent these actors are likely to take evaluations seriously. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

US Credit Crisis and Spillovers to Asia

ASIAN ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW, Issue 2 2009
Morris GOLDSTEIN
F41; F34; F31; F37 We review key highlights of the global credit crisis. We then consider how financial turmoil in the largest advanced economies might be transmitted to East Asia. The focus is on foreign trade links, international capital flows, currency market pressures and mismatches, financial sector fragilities, and countercyclical monetary and fiscal policy actions. We introduce a set of vulnerability indicators and explore whether an ordinal ranking of East Asian economies according to these vulnerability indicators seems to be related to the cross-country differences in estimated slowdowns of economic growth during the crisis. Finally, we discuss how Asian economies might encourage the adoption of a stronger regulatory and supervisory framework in the USA and whether some Asian economies and the USA might pursue a more "balanced" growth strategy after the crisis. [source]

A Model of Balance-of-Payments Crises due to External Shocks: Monetary vs.

BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, Issue 1 2004
Fiscal Approaches
F3 Abstract This paper develops a model for balance-of-payments (BOP) crises triggered by an external shock. Whether an external shock induces a BOP crisis depends crucially on the sequence of policy actions taken by the government's monetary and fiscal authorities. If the fiscal authority moves first and imposes an exogenous constraint on the monetary authority, an external shock can lead to a BOP crisis. However, if the monetary authority moves first and imposes an exogenous constraint on the fiscal authority, the same shock does not cause a BOP crisis. [source]