Search

Begin New Search Topic Markets Publication Year within 25 Years

631. Interest-Rate Targeting during the Great Moderation: A Reappraisal

Author:
Roger W. Garrison
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
In the era that has come to be known as the “Great Moderation” (dating from the mid-1980s), the Federal Reserve's policy committee (the Federal Open Market Committee or FOMC) pursued what has to be called a “learning-by-doing” strategy. The data that counted as relevant feedback—the unemployment rate and the inflation rate—seemed all along to be suggesting that the Fed was doing the right things. Even when the Fed lowered the Fed funds target to 1 per- cent in June 2003 and held it there for nearly a year, the economy appeared to be on an even keel and U.S. interest rates were in line with those in other countries. The historically low interest rates were attributed not to excessive monetary ease in the United States but to a worldwide increase in savings.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Privatization
Political Geography:
United States

632. The Way Forward: Incentives, Not Regulations

Author:
William Poole
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Most of the world today is concentrating not on the way forward after the crisis, but the way out of the crisis. This concentration brings the very real danger that steps taken now will cause problems later. The most obvious danger, perhaps, is that enormous government spending, here and abroad, will increase outstanding debt to a degree that will increase temptation to attempt to finance government budget deficits through inflation. Moral hazard is the less obvious, but perhaps more serious, problem we will face.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Privatization
Political Geography:
United States

633. After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

Author:
Christopher J. Coyne
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Christopher Coyne's book seeks to contribute to an understanding of the “precise mechanisms and contexts that contribute to or prevent” successful efforts to “export liberal democracy” by means of “military occupation and reconstruction” (p. 7). Even if this were the only accomplishment of this fine book, it would represent one of the most important contributions to the field of political economy in recent decades. However, Coyne does more. He draws from economics to produce a full-fledged framework for analyzing the economic, political, and social effects of all reconstruction efforts. He also questions the long-standing view that reconstruction requires, or even benefits from, a suspension of the principles of liberty, free association, and free market.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Privatization
Political Geography:
United States

634. Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy; Book 1 of Political Capitalism (A Trilogy)

Author:
Robert L. Bradley Jr.
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Robert L. Bradley Jr., for many years had to balance loyalty to his employer, Enron, with his belief in Austrian economics. With the collapse of Enron came the opportunity to resolve the conflict in favor of Austrian economics. Bradley chose to undertake the slow development that would produce a definitive study rather than an instant bestseller. He ultimately decided to produce a three-volume treatment. The first of these, the book under review here, deals with two overriding conceptual issues relevant to the Enron collapse and their implications to Enron and earlier debacles. The first is what is the essence of free-market economics and whether the Enron experience undermines the case for free markets. The other is the invalidity of resource pessimism. Later volumes will deal with similar problems such as the Insull holding-company collapse in the Great Depression and then a concluding volume on Enron itself.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Privatization
Political Geography:
United States

635. On the Contrary: Leading the Opposition in a Democratic South Africa

Author:
Tony Leon
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
On the Contrary is a seamless combination of a memoir of an influential South African politician and a well-researched modern history of his country. The author was the leader of the liberal Democratic Alliance, the leader of the opposition in Parliament.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Privatization
Political Geography:
United States and South Africa

636. Making Markets for Merit Goods: The Political Economy of Antiretrovirals

Author:
Ethan B. Kapstein and Josh Busby
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
This paper examines the role of policy entrepreneurs and global activists in shaping the international market for antiretroviral drugs to combat HIV/AIDS. When ARVs first came on the market in the 1990s they were exceedingly expensive; the cost of treatment was upwards of $10,000 per year. These drugs were thus accessible only to those patients who had high incomes. But in 2006, the “international community,” meeting at a United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS), made an astonishing pledge to those who were infected with HIV. It proclaimed that there should be universal access to ARV treatment. This UNGASS, following up on an earlier historic UN special session devoted entirely to AIDS in 2001, marked the first time in history that the international community pledged itself to chronic care for the ill, which in this case includes the approximately 30 million people around the world estimated to be HIV positive. How do we explain the transformation of ARVs from private goods, which only a few could afford, into merit goods that were (at least declaratively) to be made available to everyone? In other words, how does a norm of “universal access to treatment”—that no person should be denied these life-extending drugs—become the ethical basis for global public policy with respect to pharmaceutical allocation? What are the lessons of the ARV story for other global issues? These are the primary questions we explore in this paper. Briefly, we argue that the policy entrepreneurs and activists who promoted the creation of a universal access to treatment regime—of the transformation of ARVs into global merit goods—relied on a combination of moral arguments and ideas with favorable material circumstances. From the ethical perspective, the task of these entrepreneurs was to convince the “international community” that access to ARVs was a “human right,” or conversely to convince decision-makers that it was morally wrong to allocate these life-enhancing drugs solely on the basis of ability to pay. But from a material standpoint, these arguments were greatly facilitated by the lowering prices of ARVs caused by a combination of differential pricing (that is, lower prices for drugs in the developing world than in the advanced welfare states) and competition from generics producers, coupled with increases in foreign aid spending devoted to HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
Topic:
Globalization, Health, and Markets
Political Geography:
United Nations

637. What lessons from the 1930s?

Author:
Daniel Gros and Cinzia Alcidi
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
This paper explores three areas in which the experience of the Great Depression might be relevant today: monetary policy, fiscal policy and the systemic stability of the banking system. We confirm the consensus on monetary policy: deflation must be avoided. With regard to fiscal policy, the picture is less clear. We cannot confirm a widespread opinion according to which fiscal policy did not work because it was not tried. We find that fiscal policy went to the limit of what was possible within the confines of sustainability, as they existed then. Our investigation of the US banking system shows a surprising resilience of the sector: commercial banking operations (deposit-taking and lending) remained profitable even during the worst years. This suggests one policy conclusion: At present the authorities in both the US and Europe have little choice but to make up for the losses on 'legacy' assets and wait for banks to earn back their capital. But to prevent future crises of this type, one should make sure that losses from the investment banking arms cannot impair commercial banking operations. At least a partial separation of commercial and investment banking thus seems justified by the greater stability of commercial banking operations.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

638. The Effect of the Financial Crisis on Systemic Trust

Author:
Felix Roth
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
The financial crisis had a significant impact on the levels of trust that citizens place in the system and its institutions. Recent data from Eurobarometer show a significant fall in confidence on the part of European citizens in the EU's institutions. For the first time since its creation, a majority of European citizens no longer trust the European Central Bank. However, confidence levels in national governments have actually risen, supporting a contrasting trend between confidence levels in European and national institutions. This decrease in confidence towards the ECB is flanked in the case of Germany by strong anti-capitalist sentiments and a sharp decline in support for the social market economy.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

639. Challenges to Technology Transfer: A Literature Review of the Constraints on Environmental Technology Dissemination

Author:
Daniel K. N. Johnson and Kristina M. Lybecker
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Economics and Business, Colorado College
Abstract:
This paper considers the challenges to the dissemination of environmental innovation. Following a brief exploration of the legal and regulatory regimes surrounding environmental technologies, the paper examines diffusion mechanisms, market factors, social characteristics and political elements that facilitate and complicate dissemination. Given the importance of innovation to economic development and growth, the diffusion of innovation is of great interest to economists and policymakers alike.
Topic:
Development, Environment, Markets, and Science and Technology

640. The Effect of Wage-Payment Reform on Workers' Labor Supply and Welfare

Author:
Esther Redmount, Arthur Snow, and Ronald S. Warren Jr.
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Economics and Business, Colorado College
Abstract:
We analyze the effects of a largely ignored 1885 legislative reform in Massachusetts requiring that firms provide workers the option of receiving weekly wage payments. Using an inter-temporal model of deferred compensation, we derive conditions on elasticities of labor supply that determine the effects of the reform on workers' effective wage and utility. We then examine empirically the effects of the reform, using weekly data on mill workers in Lowell. Given the implications of our theoretical analysis, the empirical findings of positive wage and reform elasticities imply that the switch to weekly payment increased workers' effective wage and well-being.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States