Covering Robert Clower's writings over four decades, this collection brings together important papers that have not been reprinted in any other similar volume and recent material on economic method and theoretical foundations. Issues discussed include the doctrine and methodology of economics, price determination, oligopoly theory and Keynesian economics, as well as some of Professor Clower's substantial reviews of the work of other scholars. Above all, they offer an instructive 'history' of one scholar's attempt to enhance scientific understanding of observed economic phenomena during the last half century. The volume concludes with a complete listing of Professor Clower's publications.

Capitalism With a Human Face is a carefully edited selection of Samuel Brittan's most important recent essays. It covers topics ranging from utilitarianism and the ethics of self-interest, to the principles of macroeconomic policy and how to price people into work without throwing them into poverty. The book will be controversial, for the individualistic ethic, which it is so fashionable to attack, is not merely defended but celebrated. This collection will be of special interest both to readers of Samuel Brittan's articles who would like a more extended treatment and those new to his work. A notable feature is a specially written introduction explaining how the author came to take up political economy and how he arrived at the positions elaborated in this book.

Monetarism and the Methodology of Economics is a collection of 14 original essays in honour of Thomas Mayer focusing on the themes of monetarism, the transmission mechanism for monetary policy, the political economy of monetary policy and the methodology of empirical economics.This volume addresses the many areas where Thomas Mayer has made a major contribution and brings together a distinguished group of contributors including King Banaian, Mark Blaug, Martin Bronfenbrenner, Richard C.K. Burdekin, Thomas F. Cargill, Milton Friedman, C.A.E. Goodhart, D. Wade Hands, Abraham Hirsch, Kevin D. Hoover, David Laidler, Thomas Mayer, James L. Pierce, Steven M. Sheffrin, Richard J. Sweeney, Thomas D. Willett, Wing Thye Woo. An autobiographical essay by Thomas Mayer and a short appreciation by Kevin Hoover and Steven Sheffrin are included in this volume, together with a bibliography of Mayer's economic writings.

Money and credit are key themes of Allan H. Meltzer's ground-breaking work which is celebrated in this outstanding collection of his essays and papers. Money, Credit and Policy covers the demand for money, the relation of money to output, the role of credit and debt, regulation of financial institutions, the influence of uncertainty and macroeconomic policy. Focusing on the relations between money and credit, and in turn their relationship to output, prices and inflation, this volume includes Meltzer's early work on the demand for money - in which he suggested that the much-discussed instability of the demand for money arises from the use of Keynesian demand equations - as well as his recent contributions on trade, credit and intermediation. Among the many important papers featured in this volume, there is an analysis of why the Federal Reserve of the 1930s persisted in its deflationary policy stance for years, despite its effects, and a discussion of the limits of stabilization policy. The concluding section considers the effects of uncertainty and the reasons for the rise and fall of the dollar during the 1980s, reflecting Meltzer's continuing interest in practical policy issues.

The problems associated with chronically high inflation and hyper inflation continue to preoccupy policy makers and economists. In Great Inflations of the 20th Century, Pierre Siklos has gathered together major papers by a distinguished group of scholars who use historical episodes to understand and explain a key issue.Beginning with general surveys of historical experiences of hyperinflation and cases of chronic inflation, this volume continues with papers on the conditions which are conducive to generating high inflation. The link between monetary policy and inflation is examined through empirical studies of inflationary episodes in Germany, Hungary and Bolivia. The final part looks at how policy makers can seek to end high inflation with the smallest possible economic cost. Bringing together in one accessible volume a series of acclaimed contributions to the field, Great Inflations of the 20th Century will be a key reference resource for interested scholars and policy makers concerned with the myriad of issues surrounding the beginning and end of high or chronic inflation.

Central bank intervention in foreign currency markets is widely regarded as ineffective by economists, policy makers and financiers, yet many central banks continue to enter the market in periods of turbulence. In Foreign Exchange Intervention, Geert Almekinders explains why central banks continue to carry out foreign exchange interventions despite their poor track record.Using confidential daily intervention data from the Bundesbank and the Federal Reserve for the period 1985 to 1990, the author shows how both banks were unable, despite repeated attempts, to reverse unwanted currency movements successfully. Dr Almekinders develops a positive theory of intervention - drawing on game theory - to show how central banks which lack political independence are sometimes forced to engage in surprise interventions which are rendered ineffective by rational speculators who anticipate their moves. The author also makes extensive use of modern statistical models of exchange rates to examine the decision making process of central banks. The book includes comprehensive surveys of existing theoretical and empirical investigations of foreign exchange intervention. Foreign Exchange Intervention will be welcomed by academic researchers and students, as well as economists and analysts in the financial sector, for its comprehensive surveys of previous scholarship, the use of hitherto unavailable data from the Bundesbank and the Federal Reserve, and the policy conclusions which derive from the book's theoretical and empirical insights.

This book clarifies some misunderstandings about money by tying the concept of money to the goods and services sector of the economy. In addition, it demystifies the process of money creation on the part of central banks. The phenomenon of money is ubiquitous; it has been around for tens of thousands of years, if not longer. Indeed, no modern economy could function without money. For many, however, the concept of money remains elusive. Worse still, misinformation abounds, which leaves the uninitiated vulnerable to fraud. This lack of understanding has serious policy implications as well. When policymakers lack a firm grasp of the concept, policy is likely to be flawed and its effects are likely to be detrimental to the body politic. After providing a brief history of money, the author details the role of money in the division of labor and specialization, in economic growth, and in an interconnected world. Throughout the book, he points out the pitfalls of fallacious thinking. In recent policy debates, such thinking has led to proposals ranging from the re-institution of the gold standard to supplying limitless money as suggested by Modern Monetary Theory.

This book explores Portugal's response to the 2008 economic crisis and how the country regained the trust of the global capital markets through investor support. The experiences and successes of Portugal are compared with the other Eurozone countries, in particular Greece which had to negotiate a series of assistance programs, to highlight the strategies which helped lessen the impact of the debt crisis. This book aims to provide insight into the global investor ecosystem and to how financial globalization works in practice, illustrating how the multinational investor universe, the financial media, rating agencies, and how investment banks interact. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in financial markets and political economy, and also financial market practicioners and policy makers.

This book presents the state of the art in the relatively new field of dynamic economic modelling with regime switches. The contributions, written by prominent scholars in the field, focus on dynamic decision problems with regime changes in underlying dynamics or objectives. Such changes can be externally driven or internally induced by decisions. Utilising the most advanced mathematical methods in optimal control and dynamic game theory, the authors address a broad range of topics, including capital accumulation, innovations, financial decisions, population economics, environmental and resource economics, institutional change and the dynamics of addiction. Given its scope, the book will appeal to all scholars interested in mathematical and quantitative economics.

The theory of monopoly capital is central to any satisfactory analysis of accumulation and stagnation in advanced capitalist economies. This major new book presents in one volume recent discussions of monopoly capitalism to emphasize the centrality and vitality of this tradition in modern political economy.Following the work of Kalecki, Steindl and Baran and Sweezy, a number of leading economists address key issues such as the calculation of the economic surplus, the division of income between labour and capital, oligopoly collusion over output and pricing, the growth of unproductive activity, the degree of monopoly, surplus absorption and stagnation and the history of the present crisis.

Debt, Deficits and Exchange Rates presents recent work by Helmut Reisen on current international monetary problems in East Asia and Latin America. Written over the last four years, these papers are readily accessible and of immediate policy relevance. The first part is concerned with the debt problems of developing countries, including the growth of domestic public debt, means of hedging a country's debt portfolio against key currency fluctuations, evidence on the debt overhang hypothesis, an evaluation of the Brady Plan, and how to attract foreign direct investment. This is followed by essays on financial opening which discuss the impact of alternative exchange rate regimes during financial integration, the degree of financial openness in Korea and Taiwan, an appropriate strategy for the liberalization of capital flows, and the relationship between financial opening and capital flows. The final part underlines the need for exchange rate management. Issues considered include New Zealand's experience with a pure float, the use of the theory of optimal currency areas to assess whether Asian countries should peg to the Yen, institutional features of macroeconomic management in Asia, and how Latin America should respond to heavy capital flows. Bringing together under one cover a wealth of analysis, comment and argument by a leading international scholar, this volume will be welcomed by students, teachers and policymakers as an important contribution to understanding international monetary problems in the developing world.

The theory of inflation seeks to explain why inflation occurs and why its rate varies, to explain the co-movements betwen the inflation rate and other variables and to permit the design of mechanisms capable of delivering an optimal inflation path.The Theory of Inflation presents in one volume a comprehensive description of the historical inflation record, surveys the current state of knowledge on the fundamental forces that cause inflation and the mechanisms that propagate it, and examines the costs of inflation and the problems of achieving price stability. Professor Parkin's selection draws both upon the contribution of mainstream economists - whose work has been based on market demand and supply - and a new generation whose work has emphasized the importance of technology and preferences. This volume, as the introduction states, indicates that there is much of value to be learnt from both approaches.

Oskar Lange was one of the few economists able to observe first hand the three major economic systems that have been the hallmark of the 20th century. He learned about the economic backwardness of peripheral capitalism in pre-war Poland. Later he spent more than twelve years in the bastion of modern capitalism, the United States. After returning to Poland in 1948 he linked his fate to the creation and then reform of the Communist system.This important collection of Professor Lange's work, prepared by his disciple and close friend Tadeusz Kowalik, presents his most important work on the economic theory of socialism, economic planning, Marxism and 'bourgeois' economics. The volume makes an important contribution by improving access to the papers of an economist whose work was at the very heart of the intellectual conflict between socialism and capitalism in the late twentieth century.

This important new volume addresses the many aspects of banking in European market economies in the twentieth century, making innovative and authoritative research available to historians, economists, financiers and business analysts. The distinguished group of authors examines the historic role of banks in utilizing domestic and foreign financial resources. Their contributions show that from the 1880s onwards banks became an integral part of the capital market in continental Europe. In the course of this development the banks played a crucial part in financing industry in North and Central Europe. This symbiotic relationship between banks and industry is analysed and is shown to have had a decisive impact on the inflation and crisis-prone interwar period. The comparative and quantitative methods applied in these papers reveal differences between the countries of North and Central Europe, especially with regard to the degree of state intervention in individual economies. Other topics discussed include the networks of interlocking directorships, the effectiveness of banking legislation and the impact of the national question on banking in central and Southeast Europe. Universal Banking in the Twentieth Century illustrates both striking similarities and marked differences in the role of universal banking across Europe in terms of the level of industrialization and the pace of economic growth.

The global financial and economic shock of 2007-09 is the third major economic crisis to have buffeted Cambodia in its post-conflict period, coming in the wake of the food crisis of 2007-08 and just a decade after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 (the ""triple crises""). Cambodia's post-conflict history can be divided into two periods: 1991-98, referred to as the early phase of transition during which the first of the triple crises, the Asian financial crisis, occurred; and 1998 to the present, the late phase of transition during which the food and economic shocks transpired. A stocktake of the developments in Cambodia's post-conflict history suggests that the country has come a long way in reinstituting the foundations of a capitalist economic and procedural democracy but has yet to make significant headway in economic sophistication and substantive democracy. The triple crises were different, yet had similar characteristics. They were all exogenously-driven shocks with their own specific causes but their effects were shaped by the country's situation at the time. In terms of magnitude of impact, the global financial and economic downturn was the worst of the three crises. That it caused the first ever growth contraction in the post-conflict period was sufficient rationale for the series of studies that substantiate this book. Like the two shocks that preceded it however, the way it impacted on Cambodia cannot be understood in isolation from the overall post-conflict milieu. The thesis here is not that endogenous factors caused the crisis. It is simply that endogenous factors shaped the impact of the crisis and a historical, as opposed to a static, analysis better illuminates the nature of the impact. This book is an in-depth comprehensive examination of the impact of the global financial and economic crisis on Cambodia. It probes into the effects of the shock at macro, sectoral and micro levels using qualitative and quantitative techniques.

In this reassessment of the 19th century monetary theorist and banking reformer, Thomas Joplin, Professor O'Brien sets out to place his subject in a new perspective. He discusses Joplin's role as a reformer and his relationships with fellow economists and explores such issues as the problems of paper currency, the principle of metallic fluctuation, agricultural prices and the monetary system and the structure of banking. The book should be of interest to anyone interested in the development of monetary economics as well as to economic historians.

The industrialized economies of the world have experienced a considerable diversity of economic experience since the shocks of the 1970s. The authors of this major study assess the institutional determinants of economic performance in a comparative analysis of OECD economies. They focus in particular on the role played by corporatist arrangements in such countries as Austria and the Scandinavian states. Corporatism and Economic Performance argues that economists often have a narrow view of the scope and function of corporatism, focusing on the extent to which collective bargaining is centralized, and ignoring the important role of durable, consensual policy making arrangements. The record of the corporatist economies is assessed and considerable evidence is found to show that they have borne the burden of economic adjustment over the last twenty years in a less inegalitarian way than other OECD economies, with lower rates of unemployment and greater economic stability. In an increasingly integrated world economy, the future prospects for corporatism look uncertain, although there is still a strong economic case for corporatist institutions. This book sheds new light on corporatism as a complex and multidimensional entity, examining the rationale, scope, performance and future prospects of corporatist institutions.

Open economy macroeconomics is a major focus of research interest stimulated in part by the increasing interdependence of the world economy and by the move towards floating exchange rates. This important new book addresses several central issues in the macroeconomic theory of different forms of open economies under differing degrees of dependency.

Wages and Profits in the Capitalist Economy provides an incisive study of the impact of monopolistic power on macroeconomic performance in the USA and the UK since 1945, within a post-Kaleckian framework.It provides new evidence to suggest that the implications of monopolistic power, in both product and labour markets, are important in understanding macroeconomic performance. It argues that the rise and fall in profitability that accompanies the cycle of boom and recession is indicative of the operation of oligopolistic markets. Furthermore, the political economy of the distribution of income exacerbates macroeconomic instability. The book concludes that traditional Keynesian approaches favouring solutions to increase economic growth, and neoclassical approaches advocating supply-side policies to suppress conflict over distribution, may offer little prospect of long-term economic stability.

This book focuses on the recent rise of new regional economic institutions such as the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which were established, in part, as a result of dissatisfaction of dynamic emerging markets with global economic institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the GATT/WTO. The latter were formed by advanced economies in the West, after the historic Bretton Wood Conference of 1944. In doing so, the book addresses how this recent round of decentralisation, defined as the co-existence of "senior" global institutions and a plethora of newly-established regional institutions, has affected global economic governance, and the delivery of global public goods. It also poses the question if this has led to the fragmentation of global economic governance. The book adds value to existing literature by using a benefit-risk analytical framework to study the decentralisation process. Unlike the "contested multilateralism" argument used by some authors which focuses on the costs of decentralisation, the authors argue that benefits must also be considered. It also describes and analyses the establishment of global and regional international economic institutions and the evolving relationships between the two. Third, the authors argue that this decentralisation process will continue in the postpandemic period and recommend policies to reset the relationship between global and regional institutions. And lastly, the book discusses proposals to reform the international monetary system including the global reserve system with a view to reducing the hegemony of the US dollar. Throughout the book, the role for Asia is also identified, and elaborated on.

Modelling trends and cycles in economic time series has a long history, with the use of linear trends and moving averages forming the basic tool kit of economists until the 1970s. Several developments in econometrics then led to an overhaul of the techniques used to extract trends and cycles from time series. In this second edition, Terence Mills expands on the research in the area of trends and cycles over the last (almost) two decades, to highlight to students and researchers the variety of techniques and the considerations that underpin their choice for modelling trends and cycles.

This engaging and intelligent book provides an accessible, down to earth assessment of the role of formalism and rigour in economics.Professor Mayer argues that there is room in economics for both highly formalised theory and for the less formal theory that predominates in the natural sciences. But economists generally fail to distinguish between these two types of theory. As a result, they often act as if the strength of an argument depends on the strength of its strongest link. They misallocate effort, polishing those parts of the argument that tend to be formalised, while paying insufficient attention to the others. Drawing on public choice theory, Mayer shows how this emphasis on the strongest link has distorted research particularly in new classical theory. He advocates stricter econometric testing, showing that many procedures currently used are only soft tests.

This book provides a concise yet rigorous discussion of the main issues in modern macroeconomics. In particular, it examines the controversy over the role and conduct of macroeconomic stabilization policy.While the book is written in such a way as to allow students to read individual chapters in isolation, according to their interests and needs, the book follows a structured direction. After providing a review of mainstream macro-models and the chief areas of controversy between Keynesian, Monetarist and New Classical approaches to stabilization policy, subsequent chapters focus on selected key controversies: the balance of payments and exchange rates; inflation and unemployment; money and economic activity; fiscal policy and aggregate demand; and business cycles. The approach adopted by the authors make this book highly responsive to teaching and student needs. This authoritative state-of-the-art survey of modern macroeconomics will be essential reading for intermediate level courses in macroeconomics.