Markets and Politicians: Politicized Economic Choice

ISBN-13: 9789401057288 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 368 str.

Arye L. Hillman; Arye L. Hillman

Opis

It has been common practice in economic models to portray the politician as a mechanistic individual who behaves to maximize a prespecified conception of social welfare. The self interest and discretion that is attributed to firms and consumers as optimizing agents is absent from the motives of such a politician. This assumes that economic policy choice is depoliticized. This book recognizes that politicians do not behave mechanistically. Politicians are viewed as self interest-optimizing agents and, thus, the choice of economic policies is politicized. The book provides a broad spectrum of economic policies in which markets and politicians interact. Section I is concerned with policy determination in western market economies. Section II deals with the entry of markets into transitional socialist economics, and Section III goes into international transactions.

Spis treści

I: Economic Policies and Political Motives.- A. Theoretical Perspectives.- 1. Economic Policies and Political Competition.- 2. Voluntary collective action.- 3. Factor income taxation in a representative democracy.- B. Policy Choices.- 4. Macroeconomic stabilization policy: Does politics matter?.- 5. Accidental freedom.- 6. Europe 1992: From the common to the single market.- II: Markets and Socialism.- A. Market Socialism in Eastern Europe.- 7. Markets and ownership in socialist countries in transition.- 8. Socialism in less than one country.- B. Transitionary Policies.- 9. Restoring property rights.- 10. Liberalization dilemmas.- C. Economic Change in China.- 11. The failure of recentralization in China: Interplays among enterprises, local governments, and the center.- 12. Market-oriented reform and fiscal policy.- III: International Economic Policy.- A. International Trade.- 13. The political-economy perspective on trade policy.- 14. The economics and political economy of managed trade.- 15. Changes in trade-policy regimes.- B. International Monetary Transaction.- 16. Foreign-exchange markets and central-bank intervention.- 17. The political economy of the international debt crisis.- 18. Foreign-exchange market liberalization: Anatomy of a failure.