Economics

Macroeconomic Policy and Public Choice

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In 1932 the US people made a decision of far greater historical import than the choice of a new Chief Executive. For better or for worse, the US people decided that it would not put up with deflation--the price that capitalism has always had to pay for its periodic excesses. What the US wanted was a President who would "do something." And doing something meant preventing the country from going through the wringer.!
In the past century American government has grown from a small scale operation reflecting the political values of laissez faire to a federal bureaucracy controlling about a fifth of the economy. Until the Great Depression the only exception to the minimalist ethic of government occurred during wartime. Then, as Time magazine reports, the domestic role of government began to shift gradually, but radically. The widespread suffering of 1930s convinced a majority of voters that the government should be held responsible for the state of the economy. The economic stimulus of wartime spending drove home John Maynard Keynes' (1936) contention that government could influence the economy. Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to practice in a tentative way the economic intervention that voters came to expect of postwar governments; the first significant application of what came to be known as fiscal policy took a military form. Our goal is an examination of the macroeconomic equilibrium of the postwar democracy with discretionary stabilization, political parties and periodic elections.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Macroeconomic Policy and Public Choice

Call Number

-

Publisher

New York : Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg., 1997

Collation

1-261

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

3: 978-3-540-64872-7

Classification

NONE

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

1st Edtion

Subject(s)

Economics

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

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