This book examines how electoral laws, the timing of election, the ideological orientation of governments, and the nature of competition between political parties influence unemployment, economic growth, inflation, and monetary and fiscal policy. The book presents both a thorough overview of the theoretical literature and a vast amount of empirical evidence.
A collection of articles on how the government influences the economy in order to secure re-election. This book surveys the empirical and major theoretical approaches, such as vote maximization, partisan and vote-cum-partisan models, and rational political business cycles. It provides extensions including the role of the central bank, of direct democracy, and the cycles in European communist countries, as well as discussing policy relevance.
Business Cycles in Economic Thought underlines how, over the time span of two centuries, economic thought interacted with cycles in a continuous renewal of theories and rethinking of policies, whilst economic actions embedded themselves into past economic thought. This book argues that studying crises and periods of growth in different European countries will help to understand how different national, political and cultural traditions influenced the complex interaction of economic cycles and economic theorizing. The editors of this great volume bring together expert contributors consisting of economists, historians of economic thought and historians of economics, to analyse crises and theories of the nineteenth and the twentieth century. This is alongside a comprehensive outlook on the most relevant advances of economic theory in France, Germany and Italy, as well as coverage of non-European countries, such as the United States. Several of the highly prestigious Villa Vigoni Trilateral Conferences formed the background for the discussions in this book. This volume is of great interest to students and academics who study history of economic thought, political economy and macroeconomics.
Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 2,7, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel (Institut für Sozialwissenschaften), course: Governing the crisis: how democracies deal with adverse economic conditions, language: English, abstract: Various economic difficulties and economic crises can be challenges for democratic political systems. In some cases it can lead to social cataclysms and even destruction of political systems. In this connection, different political actors offer different programs in order to solve current socio-economic problems. However, according to the modern economic theory the free market economy develops cyclical, and the period of recession always comes after the recovery. There is the conception of political business cycles, which confirm it. Nevertheless political parties often have to carry out the policies and even take part in elections in conditions of economic crises. In some cases they even have to change their programs or significantly correct them in order to keep their voters. In this way, the problem of this term paper is the following one: what are the implications for political parties if they stand for elections in times of crises and their behavior towards voters is either opportunistic or ideological? In order to give the answer for this question which is actual for the current European sovereign debt crisis it is first of all necessary to define political business cycle and to describe their models, which also include the concepts of the parties’ behavior as well as their interaction with voters and issues. Then the role of political business cycles in the economic crises will be explained. The understanding of the nature of political business cycles and the activities of political parties in them reveal the implications which the parties face by elections in times of crises. It can be also helpful for overcoming the consequences of the crisis with simultaneously saving of political stability.
This volume presents six new papers on environmental and energy economics and policy in the United States. Rebecca Davis, J. Scott Holladay, and Charles Sims analyze recent trends in and forecasts of coal-fired power plant retirements with and without new climate policy. Severin Borenstein and James Bushnell examine the efficiency of pricing for electricity, natural gas, and gasoline. James Archsmith, Erich Muehlegger, and David Rapson provide a prospective analysis of future pathways for electric vehicle adoption. Kenneth Gillingham considers the consequences of such pathways for the design of fuel vehicle economy standards. Frank Wolak investigates the long-term resource adequacy in wholesale electricity markets with significant intermittent renewables. Finally, Barbara Annicchiarico, Stefano Carattini, Carolyn Fischer, and Garth Heutel review the state of research on the interactions between business cycles and environmental policy.
The classic introduction to the New Keynesian economic model This revised second edition of Monetary Policy, Inflation, and the Business Cycle provides a rigorous graduate-level introduction to the New Keynesian framework and its applications to monetary policy. The New Keynesian framework is the workhorse for the analysis of monetary policy and its implications for inflation, economic fluctuations, and welfare. A backbone of the new generation of medium-scale models under development at major central banks and international policy institutions, the framework provides the theoretical underpinnings for the price stability–oriented strategies adopted by most central banks in the industrialized world. Using a canonical version of the New Keynesian model as a reference, Jordi Galí explores various issues pertaining to monetary policy's design, including optimal monetary policy and the desirability of simple policy rules. He analyzes several extensions of the baseline model, allowing for cost-push shocks, nominal wage rigidities, and open economy factors. In each case, the effects on monetary policy are addressed, with emphasis on the desirability of inflation-targeting policies. New material includes the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates and an analysis of unemployment’s significance for monetary policy. The most up-to-date introduction to the New Keynesian framework available A single benchmark model used throughout New materials and exercises included An ideal resource for graduate students, researchers, and market analysts
Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2006 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy, grade: 2,0, Free University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: The current political decisions do not only affect the economy, additionally also future capital stocks and (infra-) structures are significantly influenced. Generally one should keep in mind that natural resources as well as price inflation for produced goods highly depend on the decision whether to consume now or save them for later. One of the most important influence factors for the economical life is the government policy. The trade-off between the focus on present and future welfare (between consuming and saving) is mainly based on political decisions. Thus it is important to address the role of the government and understand how elections and voters might influence the decision of the political parties during their incumbency. This paper describes the motivation of the politicians to influence the voters before the election takes place in order to win. Generally speaking, they use economical instruments (like the Phillips curve, aggregated demand, budgets, etc.) to increase their chance for the next election. However the usage of these instruments produces a downturn shortly after the election; the whole process is called a political business cycle.
This volume presents the most complete collection available of the work of Victor Zarnowitz, a leader in the study of business cycles, growth, inflation, and forecasting.. With characteristic insight, Zarnowitz examines theories of the business cycle, including Keynesian and monetary theories and more recent rational expectation and real business cycle theories. He also measures trends and cycles in economic activity; evaluates the performance of leading indicators and their composite measures; surveys forecasting tools and performance of business and academic economists; discusses historical changes in the nature and sources of business cycles; and analyzes how successfully forecasting firms and economists predict such key economic variables as interest rates and inflation.
The NBER Macroeconomics Annual presents, extends, and applies pioneering work in macroeconomics and stimulates work by macroeconomists on important policy issues. Each paper in the Annual is followed by comments and discussion.
