First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The formulation of a common European monetary policy offers an important challenge to policymakers both in Europe and around the globe. The analysis of monetary transmission mechanisms in Europe, and the US, provides insights of great importance as the institutional environment of monetary policy changes. Historically, it has been proved difficult to empirically establish the effects of monetary policy measures on the economy. This study of the monetary transmission mechanism pays close attention to the role of financial markets in the transmission process. The author analyses aspects of monetary transmission, such as interest rates and exchange rates, with evidence from several European countries including the Netherlands, UK and Germany as well as from the US. This research on monetary transmission greatly increases our understanding of the effect, or ineffectiveness, of monetary policy on economies in general. The author presents a comprehensive discussion of the outcomes of empirical research along with an extensive survey of the literature and a discussion of the methods used, since interest in the subject was renewed in the 1980s. This work will be invaluable to policymakers in central banks and government ministries as well as academic researchers and economists alike.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the problems that the current working of capital markets are generating on both developed and developing economies. It pays special attention to the reasons explaining the unstable and volatile working of international financial markets and to the consequences of that behaviour on both the economic performance of the involved countries and on the economic policies implemented.

The economies of Latin America have undergone a deep process of change in the last decade as a result of the application of major reforms. The outcome can be fairly described as a New Economic Model. This New Economic Model is distinguished from its predecessor, in force before the 1980s debt crisis, by an emphasis on market forces and export-led growth. This book explores the main features of the New Economic Model in Latin America and, through analysis of the reform process and case studies, examines its impact on income distribution and poverty.

This book explores the life and work of Nicholas Kaldor, examining the influences that shaped and inspired his writings, and looks in detail at the crucial part he played in twentieth-century economics. Offering a comprehensive intellectual portrait of Kaldor, this book explains this great economist's importance in his own time and in ours.

After a century and a half of efforts at constructing arrangements and rules for international monetary interaction, present-day national authorities do not seem to have come much closer to achieving the aim of enduring exchange rate stability combined with a good macroeconomic performance. A distinguished group of economists and economic historians offers new insights into the working of the most important of such experiences, including nineteenth century bimetallism, the 'classical' gold standard, Bretton Woods and the European Monetary System.

Regional trade agreements proliferated in Africa in the wake of independence from colonial rule. For the most part these agreements failed to deliver the regional integration and economic benefits that were promised, and amounted to little more than a propaganda coup for the leaders that signed them.This book explores conventional explanations of the failure of these agreements, and challenges the accepted wisdom, highlighting the symbiotic relationship between 'Big Man' politics and crony capitalism. The rise of second generation regional trade agreements in the first decade of the twenty-first century emphasises the pressing need for a revised assessment of the aims, consequences and scope of these agreements. This book focuses on the revitalized East African Community to examine the potential benefits of modern agreements to foster economic development and the hurdles that must be overcome to realise this potential.

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference held in 1990 on the theme of Exchange Rate Regimes and Currency Unions. The papers are all devoted to theoretical and empirical analyses of systems of fixed and flexible exchange rates, to the role of central bank behaviour and other government policies in such systems, to the prospects, workings and effects of a European monetary system, and to topics of capital mobility and economic integration in general.

Vietnam, along with China, stands out as a rare success story among transition economies. This authoritative study of the reform process since 1989 pays particular attention to the way the macroeconomics framework can contribute to an environment that encourages human development and helps to reduce poverty. Thus there are chapters on macroeconomics reforms, international trade policies, the role of the state, rural development, education and health, environmental issues and poverty and gender inequality. Although areas of weakness are indicated, emphasis is placed on the success Vietnam has experienced compared to other transition economies. The lessons of both the successes and failures of the reform process for policymakers elsewhere are outlined.

This is the most comprehensive textbook available on the money demand function and its role in modern macroeconomics. The book takes a microeconomic- and aggregation-theoretic approach to the topic and presents empirical evidence using state-of-the-art econometric methodology, while recognizing the existence of unsolved problems and the need for further developments. The new edition is fully revised and includes new chapters.

This book presents the most important published articles of Martin Shubik who has made a path-breaking contribution to game theory and political economy. The volume shows how game theory can be used to explore fundamental problems in economics, political science and operations research.The book opens with an introduction to the career of Martin Shubik and the influences which have shaped his research. In this, and the chapters which follow, Martin Shubik stresses the importance of formulative models as playable games and the treatment of information to describe decision making among individuals, using examples from industrial organization. He demonstrates that games are a fruitful way to extend our knowledge of competition among the few. In addition, he considers the importance of gaming in economics and business suggesting that experimental games can be used to illustrate problems and principles in multi-person decision making. This book will be welcomed by economists, game theorists, political scientists, and operations researchers.

This volume provides an up-to-date account of how the process of economic transition in Eastern Europe is unfolding from the point of view of Eastern European economists assessing their native economies. The authors have personally experienced the frustrations of the previous Stalinist system of central planning and public ownership, as well as the difficulties and pitfalls of designing new systems based on markets and private ownership. The book focuses on the three countries of Eastern Europe leading the reform efforts--Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland--and points out similarities and differences in their reform strategies.

Although the stories of economic change in Eastern Europe have dominated news headlines, the real challenges of designing and maintaining viable economies are just beginning. The analysis in this volume will be of interest to those in the academic and policy-making communities.

This research investigates the impact of three equal cost alternative labor market policies on the economic well-being of low-income families and society in general at the turn of the 21st century. The principal focus is on how changes in the minimum wage, Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and payroll taxes influence the well-being of low-income American families. The methods we employ also reveal how much of the benefits from raising the minimum wage, increasing the EITC, and reducing payroll taxes of workers in low-income families accrue to families in the middle and upper ranges of the income distribution. Thus, we consider the entire distribution, but focus primary attention on families and persons at or near the bottom of the income distribution.

The research reported in this book has three distinguishing features. First, it examines and compares changes in the minimum wage, the EITC, and payroll taxes using a common analytical framework. There is considerable discussion of the impacts of raising the minimum wage and increasing EITC payments. The research reported here places these two policies in an "equivalent social cost" framework and analyzes the distributional consequences of each policy. In addition, we use the same equivalent cost paradigm to investigate an alternative policy that rebates a portion of the payroll taxes paid by workers in low-income families. A second distinguishing feature of the research is that it incorporates important insights from the poverty and income distribution literature into the analysis of labor market policies and family well-being. This literature suggests that any evaluation of success or failure of poverty fighting policies thatincrease the minimum wage, expand the EITC, or reduce payroll taxes requires that the poor population be properly identified and poverty measured using distribution sensitive measures of poverty and not simple headcounts of the poor. Further, it is important to check for the sensitivity of any conclusions about the policy choices to alternative poverty lines. A third distinguishing feature of the research is that we use important developments in the applied welfare economics of income distribution to address the key question: which policy alternative is best?

This book pulls together papers presented at a conference in honour of the 1981 Nobel Prize Winner for Economic Science, the late James Tobin. Among the contributors are Olivier Blanchard, Edmund Phelps, Charles Goodhart and Marco Buti. One of the main aims of the conference was to discuss what potential role monetary policy has on economic activity and unemployment reduction in three key currency zones - the United States, European Union and Japan.

Looking at historical cross-country interactions, this book examines the role of the US in the world economy. Illustrating that US shocks tend to have a global nature and that Monetary Union only partially shelters the Euro area from its external environment, the book argues that the US should fully assume its responsibility, minimizing shock transmission.

'Superb' - Tim Harford, author of How to Make the World Add Up Money is essential to the economy and how we live our lives, yet is inherently worthless. We can use it to build a home or send us to space, and it can lead to the rise and fall of empires. Few innovations have had such a huge impact on the development of humanity, but money is a shared fiction; a story we believe in so long as others act as if it is true. Money is rarely out of the headlines - from the invention of cryptocurrencies to the problem of high inflation, extraordinary interventions by central banks and the power the West has over the worldwide banking system. In Money in One Lesson, Gavin Jackson answers the most important questions on what money is and how it shapes our world, drawing on vivid examples from throughout history to demystify and show how societies and its citizens, both past and present, are always entwined with matters of money. 'A highly illuminating, well-researched and beautifully written book on one of humanity's most important innovations' - Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, Financial Times

This book puts forward the view that rational expectations have a key role in formulating economic policy and in determining economic activity, prices, interest rates, and employment rates. Arguing that economic policy crucially depends upon expectations about future government policies, the author supports his thesis by drawing on monetary theory as well as on the actual experiences of several post-World War II countries.

Highlighting recent revolutionary changes, this volume deals with the transformation from central planning towards more efficient economic structures in Eastern and Central Europe and the (former) Soviet Union. Political democracy and the creation of market economies have now become realistic aims; but the process of reform is only just beginning and is likely to take many years. The papers and discussion in this book deal with systematic changes, deregulation, abolition of price controls and macroeconomic fiscal and monetary policies needed to stablize the economies and to implement appropriate structural changes.

Market Behaviour and Macroeconomic Modelling discusses several state-of-the-art developments in the modelling approach to market behaviour in macroeconomic modelling. Leading experts in this field, deal with the implications of market imperfections in commodity markets, capital markets and labour markets for macroeconomic modelling and stabilization policy. They demonstrate that incorporating market imperfections leads to very different policy recommendations than those derived from the standard perfect competition model.

Robert Eisner has made a seminal contribution to the development of macroeconomic analysis in the latter half of the twentieth century. This carefully edited selection of his essays traces the development of economic thought in the wake of the Keynesian revolution and offers a critique of the neoclassical contribution to economic analysis and major macroeconomic policy issues.Professor Eisner is fundamentally concerned with the determinants of employment and growth in a market economy. In this book, he provides a rigorous analysis of the permanent income hypothesis, the multiplier, interest rates, the liquidity trap, consumption and saving, depreciation, unemployment and growth models. He goes on to examine fiscal and monetary policy and the measurement and effects of budget deficits over the post-war period, challenging the view that budget deficits should necessarily be avoided. Professor Eisner also offers new measures of saving, investment and national income and product, which provide new insights into the economic factors affecting current welfare and future growth. Finally, he discusses the importance of full employment and criticises the idea that there is a natural rate of unemployment.

The main aim of this book is to develop and implement an innovative tool: exchange-entitlement mapping, or E-mapping for short. This tool enables us to look at the economic and social opportunities to develop human capabilities for different groups of individuals, depending on their group identity such as age, ethnicity or gender. In the context of this book, however, an entitlement approach is used to explain the channels through which macroeconomic shocks affect individual well-being, depending on the individual's identity and related social norms attached to this identity. In other words, by including capabilities into the existing E-mapping theory, this book shows how capabilities are socially shaped according to individual entitlements, and related entitlement failure, to a specific economic and social environment. In effect, the last part of the manuscript illustrates the E-mapping theory with the case study of the maquiladora identity in Mexico by combining an original survey of maquiladora households with an advanced time series analysis of the gender wage gap in the maquiladora industry in the post-NAFTA period.

Eurozone Dystopia traces the origin of the Eurozone and shows how the historical Franco-German rivalry combined with the growing dominance of neo-liberal economic thinking to create a monetary system that was deeply flawed and destined to fail. William Mitchell argues that the political class in Europe is trapped in a destructive groupthink. Based on a flawed understanding of macroeconomic fundamentals, groupthink extols the virtues of the erroneous concept of the self-regulating free market and prevents Europe from seeing its own policy failures. As a result, millions are unemployed, with imperiled member states caught in a cycle of persistent stagnation and rising social instability.Providing a detailed historical analysis of the evolution of the Eurozone and its failings from the 1940s to the present day, the book argues that the Eurozone lacks the necessary monetary architecture, particularly the existence of a federal fiscal function which could have resolved the economic crisis quickly. The author examines the options available to Europe and concludes that an orderly abandonment of the euro and a return to national currencies is the superior option available. The justification for this conclusion is exhaustively argued within a Modern Monetary Theory framework. This thoughtful and accessible account of Europe's economic woes will appeal to all those who are seeking an explanation for the crisis and are receptive to sensible and credible alternatives to the current scenario.

Japanese firms are in the midst of the most protracted economic crisis in their post-war history. The end of the "bubble economy" has led to a long era of low growth. This change in the general business environment has profound consequences for the management and the organization of corporate Japan, as well as for the theory of the Japanese firm. The contributions to this book cover a broad range of subjects, from the strategies and organizational structures to the management of human resources and innovation processes in the 1990s. These changes are systematically commented on by field specialists from abroad, especially Europe, relating the situation in Japan to comparable developments in other countries.

Approximately two years ago, the Guido Carli Association charged a group of distinguished economists with studying various aspects of the international monetary system and proposing ways to improve it. The studies were presented at a conference in Florence, Italy, on June 19, 1998 and their edited versions are published in this volume. Ideas for the Future of the International Monetary System consists of two parts: Part I contains the studies commissioned by the Carli Association - those by Dominick Salvatore; Koichi Hamada; Forrest Capie; Michele Fratianni, Andreas Hauskrecht and Aurelio Maccario; Jurgen von Hagen and Ingo Fender, Michael Artis, Marion Kohler and Jacques Melitz; Barry Eichengreen; Michele Fratianni and Andreas Hauskrecht; Paolo Savona and Aurelio Maccario; and Elvio Dal Bosco - and the comments by Paul De Grauwe and William Branson, and the editors' conclusions. Part II contains three papers presented at the Florence conference, by Antonio Fazio, Carl Scognamiglio, and Alberto Predieri.