...Hello New Revenues, Goodbye Debt Crisis For the past few years, the United States has been running on a budget deficit of historic proportions. By spending more than it is earning in tax revenues. To fund this deficit, the United States has to go into more debt, making Congress impose a limitation on how much the government can borrow. When the United States elected Barrack Obama, the nation thought the deficit would soon be reduced. Obama had vowed to cut the deficit in half by early 2009, but since then, he has continuously cut taxes and increased spending, which in return increases the amount of debt for the nation. Since the United States is still unable to find a way to increase its revenues, the nation’s super committee will soon have to make a decision on how to achieve its reduction goal of 1.2 trillion dollars. Republican and Democratic politicians have been going back and forth for years on what the best strategy is to raise revenues for the United States. Most of the earlier acts in the 1980s and 1990s relied heavily on tax increases to do most of the work for the deficit reduction. On the contrary, by the year 1997, tax increases were entirely ruled out as a source of deficit reduction. Each political party’s view on deficit reduction plans tends to be opposites. Many politicians are arguing that Congress will never come to a decision on what path to take to reduce the nation’s debt. Both political parties have strong beliefs on what is the best way to overcome this...
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...Crafts are created to obtain luxury products. The value realized from them increases, and, as a result, profits are again multiplied in the town. Production there is thriving even more than before. And so it goes with the second and third increase. All the additional labor serves luxury and wealth, in contrast to the original labor that served the necessity of life. Economic growth is an important part of economic theory and one of the most significant problems economists tried to explain is the differences of growth rates of countries. Economic growth has been discussed since the time of physiocrats and Adam Smith. In his book “Wealth of Nations” (1776), Adam Smith mentioned economic growth as the improving and increasing of capital. David Ricardo in “The Theory of Comparative Advantage” (1817) emphasized on the benefits of trade and its role in the expansion of economies. Modern economic growth...
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...Economics 314 Coursebook, 2010 Jeffrey Parker 14 MODELS OF UNEMPLOYMENT Chapter 14 Contents A. Topics and Tools ............................................................................ 2 B. Defining Unemployment .................................................................. 3 The statistical definition ................................................................................................3 Problems with the statistical measures ............................................................................4 Natural and cyclical unemployment ...............................................................................6 C. Introduction to Theories of Unemployment........................................... 7 D. Minimum Wages and Unemployment ................................................. 10 A simple minimum-wage model .................................................................................. 10 Minimum-wage effects on skilled and unskilled labor ..................................................... 11 E. Unemployment Insurance and the Length of Job Search .......................... 13 A simple model of job search ........................................................................................ 13 Unemployment benefits and search duration ................................................................. 15 Optimal search duration ...........................................................................................
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...what is now regarded as relatively low inflation. It treats four questions: Why did inflation start? Why did it continue for 15 or more years, from 1965 to about 1982? Why did it end? Why did it not return? In this paper, I give an overview of the material that I consider in much greater detail in my book. As we look back to the 1950s and 1960s from the early 21st century, two of the many changes in the Federal Reserve System affecting inflation deserve comment. First, in the 1950s the goal was price stability, zero reported inflation, not inflation of about two percent. The 1959-60 disinflation brought reported cpi inflation, measured as a 12-month moving average, to less than 1 percent from March through August 1959. This measure again was below 1 percent through most of 1961, and it did not reach 2 percent until early 1966. Properly measured and adjusted for biases in the price index, the true price level probably declined modestly during this period. This period of deflation was also a period of sustained economic growth. It, and several periods of deflation discussed in volume 1 of A History of the Federal Reserve, show no evidence of the liquidity trap that absorbed much recent attention in Japan and here. A second major change is the role of economists and economic research at the Board and in...
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...Free Trade in the Real World: Competing perspectives about the role and impact of trade in developing countries. By James Lawrie Since the end of the Second World War the Western World has lead the way in the quest for free trade between nations. In particular, various arms of The United Nations, chiefly The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and The World Trade Organisation (WTO) have been the main bodies through which the developed world has pushed its agenda of liberalisation. The policies pursued by these supranational organisations are based on western economic concepts and theories and have become broadly known as the ‘Washington Consensus’, a term first coined by John Williamson in 1989. The Washington Consensus is rooted firmly in the Neoclassical approach to economic thinking and has been criticised by two main schools of thought; Structuralists and Dependency Theory. These two schools question many of the assumptions made by the Neoclassical framework and use real world observations to discredit Neoclassical policies. While Neoclassical theory suggests that all free trade is eventually mutually beneficial to everyones welfare, Dependency Theory advocates argue that free trade is a destructive force and a threat to the Developing World or the Least Developed Countries (LDC’s). Structuralist make their position in the middle ground and acknowledge that while there are gains from free trade to be made for LDC’s and Developed Countries (DC’s) alike...
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...factors that influence the macro-environment. The macro-environment is always changing, so the success of the business rides on their ability to adapt to these changes and forecast the macro economy better than their competitors (Bodie). Being proactive and making a sound macro-environmental analysis can be a means of gaining a competitive advantage, or at least not being concerned by a competitive disadvantage. In completing a top-down analysis we start with the global economy (Bodie). Technological factors play in to the macro-environment by means of new inventions and development, materials development, innovative manufacturing, distribution and logistics. This also includes changes in the way that information is sent and received. This can be closely related to the environmental impacts that happen within an economy, such as depleting natural resources (Sieminski). The variations of different countries economic performance and within their regions are considerable (Bodie). What happens in other countries’ economies will influence the U.S. economy and its markets in either a negative or positive way depending on the economic circumstance. What is originally forecasted for the macroeconomic expectations through various analyses may not be the overall outcome. The global economy as a whole can be a very critical factor of industry performance, and if an economy is not expanding it can be difficult for a business to be successful (Bodie). Influences that are capable...
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...DECENTRALIZATION, GOVERNANCE AND PUBLIC SERVICES THE IMPACT OF INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Omar Azfar, Satu Kähkönen, Anthony Lanyi, Patrick Meagher, and Diana Rutherford IRIS Center, University of Maryland, College Park September 1999 Table of Contents 1 2 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................1 IMPACT OF DECENTRALIZATION ON PUBLIC SERVICES: THEORY AND EVIDENCE ............................................................................................2 2.1 Theory.............................................................................................................................................. 2 2.1.a Allocative Efficiency............................................................................................................... 2 2.1.b Accountability ......................................................................................................................... 3 2.1.c Cost Recovery ......................................................................................................................... 3 2.2 Evidence........................................................................................................................................... 3 3 FACTORS INFLUENCING THE PERFORMANCE OF DECENTRALIZED SERVICE PROVISION...................................................................................5 3.1 The Political Framework..........
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...NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES TWO DECADES OF JAPANESE MONETARY POLICY AND THE DEFLATION PROBLEM Takatoshi Ito Frederic S. Mishkin Working Paper 10878 http://www.nber.org/papers/w10878 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 October 2004 This paper is written for the NBER 15th East Asian Seminar on Economics, June 25-27, 2004. The authors are grateful to Takeshi Kudo and Emilia Simeonova for their excellent research assistance. We also thank our discussants Ken Kuttner, and Kazuo Ueda, Kunio Okina and participants at seminars at the Bank of Japan, and the East Asian Seminar on Economics. Any views expressed in this paper are the views of the authors only and not the University of Tokyo, Columbia University or the National Bureau of Economic Research. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research. © 2004 by Takatoshi Ito and Frederic S. Mishkin. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Two Decades of Japanese Monetary Policy and the Deflation Problem Takatoshi Ito and Frederic S. Mishkin NBER Working Paper No. 10878 October 2004 JEL No. E42, E52, E58 ABSTRACT This paper reviews Japanese monetary policy over the last two decades with an emphasis on the experience of deflation from the mid-1990s. The paper is quite...
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...EDUCATION QUALITY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH Education Quality and Economic Growth Education Quality and Economic Growth Eric A. Hanushek Ludger Wößmann THE WORLD BANK Washington, DC © 2007 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank 1818 H Street NW Washington DC 20433 Telephone: 202-473-1000 Internet: www.worldbank.org E-mail: feedback@worldbank.org All rights reserved 1 2 3 4 5 10 09 08 07 This volume is a product of the staff of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this volume do not necessarily reflect the views of the Executive Directors of The World Bank or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgement on the part of The World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. Rights and Permissions The material in this publication is copyrighted. Copying and/or transmitting portions or all of this work without permission may be a violation of applicable law. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank encourages dissemination of its work and will normally grant permission to reproduce portions of the work promptly. For permission to photocopy...
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...CONRAD P. KOTTAK Department of Anthropology University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 The New Ecological Anthropology Older ecologies have been remiss in the narrowness of their spatial and temporal horizons, their functionalist assumptions, and their apolitical character. Suspending functionalist assumptions and an emphasis upon (homeo)stasis, "the new ecological anthropology" is located at the intersection of global, national, regional, and local systems, studying the outcome of the interaction of multiple levels and multiple factors. It blends theoretical and empirical research with applied, policy-directed, and critical work in what Rappaport called an "engaged" anthropology; and it is otherwise attuned to the political aspects and implications of ecological processes. Carefully laying out a critique of previous ecologies by way of announcing newer approaches, the article insists on the need to recognize the importance of culture mediations in ecological processes rather than treating culture as epiphenomenal and as a mere adaptive tool. It closes with a discussion of the methodologies appropriate to the new ecological anthropology. / "the new ecology, " political ecology, applied or engaged anthropology, linkages methodology] cological anthropology was named as such during the 1960s, but it has many ancestors, including Daryll Forde, Alfred Kroeber, and, especially, Julian Steward. Steward's cultural ecology influenced the ecological anthropology of Roy Rappaport...
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...ac.uk http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/staff/clift Jim Tomlinson, University of Dundee j.d.Tomlinson@dundee.ac.uk Abstract This article questions prevailing interpretations of New Labour’s political economy. New Labour’s doctrinal statements are analysed to establish to what extent these doctrinal positions involve a repudiation of Keynesianism. Although New Labour has explicitly renounced the ‘fine tuning’ often (somewhat problematically) associated with post-war Keynesian political economy, we argue that they have carved out policy space in which to engage in macroeconomic ‘coarse tuning’ inspired by Keynesian thinking. This capacity to ‘coarse tune’ is precisely what is being sought in New Labour’s quest for credibility through the redesign on the UK macro policy framework and institutions. Our empirical focus on New Labour’s in government since 1997 offers considerable evidence that this search for the capacity to ‘coarse tune’ has been successful. Credible Keynesianism?: New Labour Macroeconomic Policy and the...
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...The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in 1930 and lasted until the late 1930s or middle 1940s. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the world's economy can decline. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by approximately 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as cash cropping, mining and logging suffered the most. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. In many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until after the end of World War II. Start Economic historians usually attribute the start of the Great Depression to the sudden devastating collapse of US stock market prices on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday; some dispute this conclusion, and see the stock crash as a symptom, rather than a cause, of the Great Depression. Even after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, optimism persisted for some time; John D. Rockefeller said that "These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come and...
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...COMPONENTS OF ECONOMIC FREEDOM AND GROWTH: An Empirical Study Eliezer B. Ayal and Georgios Karras University of Illinois at Chicago * Published in the Journal of Developing Areas, Vol.32, No.3, Spring 1998, 327-338. Publisher: Western Illinois University Abstract Out of thirteen recently isolated components of economic freedom our study identifies six which are shown to be statistically significantly related to multifactor productivity and capital accumulation. Policy implications, which could not be derived before these results, are discussed, and directions for future research are proposed. JEL code: P00, O4. Keywords: Economic Freedom, Growth, Investment. * Professor and Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607. Corresponding author's e-mail: gkarras@uic.edu. The present study is an attempt to quantify relationships between economic development and disaggregated factors which constitute elements of "economic freedom" in current terminology. The three main objectives of this paper are to: (1) verify that the currently spreading belief that economic freedom helps (some would even say it is essential for) economic growth has empirical foundations; (2) test which of the elements of economic freedom for which there are sufficient analyzable data, demonstrate a statistically significant relationship to economic growth; and (3) identify desirable directions for further research and policy implications...
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...determined policy prescriptions concerning the desirable: role of government in the economy; its degree of interventionism; the form interventionism; and the nature of government-market interactions. Changes in both theory and policy prescriptions arise mainly from the following five sources: First, there is learning. As our empirical and theoretical knowledge-base enlarges, new theoretical propositions, or new evidence concerning either resounding real-world successes or conspicuous real world failures, become apparent. These feed into new theoretical or empirical paradigms. Second, there are changes in ideology. As different power-elites ascend and wane, their ideologies ascend and wane with them. New ideologies provide new prisms through which to view both old theories and old policy prescriptions. When they are inconsistent with new...
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...A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM?: OBERGEFELL V. HODGES Kenji Yoshino The decision in Obergefell v. Hodges1 achieved canonical status even as Justice Kennedy read the result from the bench. A bare majority held that the Fourteenth Amendment required every state to perform and to recognize marriages between individuals of the same sex.2 The majority opinion ended with these ringing words about the plaintiffs: “Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”3 While Obergefell’s most immediate effect was to legalize same-sex marriage across the land, its long-term impact could extend far beyond this context. To see this point, consider how much more narrowly the opinion could have been written. It could have invoked the equal protection and due process guarantees without specifying a formal level of review, and then observed that none of the state justifications survived even a deferential form of scrutiny. The Court had adopted this strategy in prior gay rights cases.4 Instead, the Court issued a sweeping statement that could be compared to Loving v. Virginia,5 the 1967 case that invalidated bans on in––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law. I gratefully acknowledge receiving financial support from...
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