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Economic Policy

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Economic policy refers to the actions that governments take in the economic field. It covers the systems for setting interest rates and government budget as well as the labor market, national ownership, and many other areas of government interventions into the economy.

Nature of Economic Policy The ideal economic policy, both for today and tomorrow, is very simple. Government should protect and defend against domestic and foreign aggression the lives and property of the persons under its jurisdiction, settle disputes that arise, and leave the people otherwise free to pursue their various goals and ends in life. This is a radical idea in our interventionist age. Governments today are often asked to lower the prices of others, to fix wages, to help some businesses get started and to keep others from failing, to encourage or hamper imports and exports, to take care for the sick and elderly, to support the profligate, and so on. Ideally government should be a sort of caretaker, not of the people themselves, but of the conditions which will allow individuals, producers, traders, workers, entrepreneurs, savers, and consumers to pursue their own goals in peace. If government does that, and no more, the people will be able to provide for themselves much better that the government possibly could.

Concepts of Economic Policy: * Economic policy seeks to achieve objectives such a high rate of growth, a low and stable rate of inflation and high levels of employment * Government seek to manage the economy through using a number of tools or policy instruments * The mix of policy instruments used varies overtime both in response to changes in economic thinking and current economic circumstances * Overtime it has become more difficult for governments to control what happens in their domestic economies because of a process that is often referred to as

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