Political Dimensions Of The American Macroeconomy

Political macroeconomy refers to the interconnection between macroeconomic politics and macroeconomic performance. The expectational Phillips curve may be used to examine the economic aspects of this interrelation. Macroeconomic politics relates to voter behavior, presidential reelection ambition, partisan economic priorities, and special interests. These factors impact the fiscal and monetary policy actions of the president, Congress, and central bank. According to the electoral effect, presidents attempt to boost the economy before an election to increase reelection votes. According to the partisan effect, conservative presidencies are relatively inflation averse, while liberal administrations are relatively unemployment averse. The evidence, however, suggests that the electoral and partisan effects occurred idiosyncratically in the U.S. economy during 1961–2016. The economy also affects presidential approval, Congressional elections, consumer sentiment, voter participation, and macropartisanship. An international dimension of the political macroeconomy is the issue of free trade versus protectionism and the perspectives of economic liberalism, neomercantilism, and structuralism.

The state and its institutions are crucial for economic development: for better and for worse. This insight informs this important, up-to-date and authoritative survey of new trends in growth economics and the widely divergent economic performance of developing countries - for example, between Latin America and South-east Asia - which seemed to be similarly placed just a generation ago. The decisive role of the political dimension in economic growth seems clear but there are many challenges to be met in getting an analytical handle on the precise determinants and in testing empirically for this. This is the challenge taken up by the international team of contributors.

Annotation This book is primarily aimed at business managers, professionals, students, and other interested individuals who would like to gain a greater understanding and appreciation of the political macro-economy. Our presentation, however, does not require a detailed knowledge of advanced macroeconomics. The book covers the main subjects of the political macro-economy, but it is primarily written for a non-academic audience, and has minimal emphasis upon abstract mathematics and overly complex theoretical models. In this book, we examine the interrelation between politics and macroeconomics. Political influences upon macroeconomic policy and performance, as well as the effect of the macro-economy upon various political pressures, are given thorough coverage. This information is useful for understanding and predicting the direction of macroeconomic policy and macroeconomic events. Understanding the political macroeconomic environment provides insights for making successful business decisions, effective personal-finance choices, and becoming a more informed voter. We focus upon the key macroeconomic measurements of real GDP, unemployment, interest rates, and inflation and examine congressional and presidential politics and policy in light of these macroeconomic forces. These macroeconomic issues themselves are examined in the context of mainstream theories and concepts, such as aggregate supply and demand, the expectational Phillips curve, and Okun s law.

Originally, economics was called political economy, and those studying it readily accepted that economic decisions are made in a political world. But economics eventually separated itself from politics to pursue rigorous methods of analyzing individual behavior and markets. Recently, an increasing number of economists have turned their attention to the old question of how politics shape economic outcomes. To date, however, this growing literature has lacked a cogent organization and a unified approach. Here, in the first full-length examination of how political forces affect economic policy decisions, Allan Drazen provides a systematic treatment, organizing the increasingly influential "new political economy" as a more established field at the highly productive intersection of economics and political science. Although he provides an extraordinarily helpful guide to the recent explosion of papers on political economy in macroeconomics, Drazen moves far beyond survey, giving definition and structure to the field. He proposes that conflict or heterogeneity of interests should be the field's essential organizing principle, because political questions arise only when people disagree over which economic policies should be enacted or how economic costs and benefits should be distributed. Further, he illustrates how heterogeneity of interests is crucial in every part of political economy. Drazen's approach allows innovative treatment--using rigorous economic models--of public goods and finance, economic growth, the open economy, economic transition, political business cycles, and all of the traditional topics of macroeconomics. This major text will have an enormous impact on students and professionals in political science as well as economics, redefining how decision makers on several continents think about the full range of macroeconomic issues and informing the approaches of the next generation of economists.

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.

Again and again, Latin America has seen the populist scenario played to an unfortunate end. Upon gaining power, populist governments attempt to revive the economy through massive spending. After an initial recovery, inflation reemerges and the government responds with wage an price controls. Shortages, overvaluation, burgeoning deficits, and capital flight soon precipitate economic crisis, with a subsequent collapse of the populist regime. The lessons of this experience are especially valuable for countries in Eastern Europe, as they face major political and economic decisions. Economists and political scientists from the United States and Latin America detail in this volume how and why such programs go wrong and what leads policymakers to repeatedly adopt these policies despite a history of failure. Authors examine this pattern in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru—and show how Colombia managed to avoid it. Despite differences in how each country implemented its policies, the macroeconomic consequences were remarkably similar. Scholars of Latin America will find this work a valuable resource, offering a distinctive macroeconomic perspective on the continuing controversy over the dynamics of populism.

Over its lifetime, 'political economy' has had different meanings. This handbook views political economy as a synthesis of the various strands of social science, treating it as the methodology of economics applied to the analysis of political behaviour and institutions.

This unique volume offers a definitive new history of European economies at war from 1914 to 1918. It studies how European economies mobilised for war, how existing economic institutions stood up under the strain, how economic development influenced outcomes and how wartime experience influenced post-war economic growth. Leading international experts provide the first systematic comparison of economies at war between 1914 and 1918 based on the best available data for Britain, Germany, France, Russia, the USA, Italy, Turkey, Austria-Hungary and the Netherlands. The editors' overview draws some stark lessons about the role of economic development, the importance of markets and the damage done by nationalism and protectionism. A companion volume to the acclaimed The Economics of World War II, this is a major contribution to our understanding of total war.