This insightful and comprehensive book uses theory and empirical studies to debunk contemporary illusions about the functionality of economies and examines the phenomena of economic magic and economic black magic. Norman C. Miller considers 11 economic myths, three of which are the theory that excessive imports reduce employment as firms are forced to downsize or shut down, that a more equal distribution of income kills incentives and reduces economic growth rates and the myth that a higher minimum wage always generates a net decrease in employment. Chapters examine the effects of advances in technology, poverty and income inequality, international trade, and trade deficits on employment and economic growth. The book concludes with discussions on three case studies demonstrating economic black magic, namely the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This creative and accessible book will be vital reading for students and scholars in economics and finance, the history of economic thought, methodology of economics, and political economy. It will also be beneficial for business owners, economists, finance practitioners, and social scientists, as well as citizens interested in the functioning of economies.

There have been important advances in monetary economics and macroeconomics recently. In macroeconomics there has been the paramount development of the New Consensus Macroeconomics along with significant policy implications, thereby giving rise to the notion of New Monetary Policy. This book deals with the key aspects of these developments and further ones such as money, credit and the business cycle. Adding to the analysis are developments that focus on issues for open and spatial macroeconomics.

This book studies the interactions between monetary and fiscal poUcies in the euro area. It carefully discusses the process of policy competition and the structure of policy cooperation. As to policy competition, the focus is on competition between the European central bank, the American central bank, the German government, and the French government. As to policy cooperation, the focus is on the same institutions. These are higher-dimensional issues. The pohcy targets are price stability and full employment. The policy makers follow co- turkey or gradualist strategies. The policy decisions are taken sequentially or simultaneously. Monetary and fiscal policies have spillover effects. Special features of this book are numerical simulations of policy competition and numerical solutions to policy cooperation. The present book is part of a larger research project on European Monetary Union, see the references at the back of the book. Some parts of this project were presented at the World Congress of the International Economic Association. Other parts were presented at the International Conference on Macroeconomic Analysis, at the International Institute of Public Finance, at the Macro Study Group of the German Economic Association, at the Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic Association, at the Gottingen Workshop on International Economics, at the Halle Workshop on Monetary Economics, at the Research Seminar on Macroeconomics in Freiburg, and at the Passau Workshop on International Economics.

Libman and Vinokurov discuss the evolution of post-Soviet regional integration as a prominent case of 'holding-together regionalism' - integration of countries originally belonging to a single political entity. They provide a detailed account of the economic, political and social aspects of the interaction of post-Soviet countries, studying both formal regionalism and informal linkages between companies and individuals. The book pays particular attention to the political economy of this process, assessing both the reasons for the ineffectiveness of post-Soviet regionalism until recently and the driving forces of its persistence. It investigates migration flows, mutual trade and investments, as well as interaction in key sectors of infrastructure, such as telecommunications, transportation, agriculture and power utilities.

The Washington financier who first proposed creation of a trust fund to retire the national debt has written a book outlining a new plan that would prevent Congress from raiding the fund to supplement the cost of regular government programs. In 1982 he suggested a temporary 5% tax on manufacturers sales. The income would go into a debt trust fund similar to the highway trust fund. The $1 trillion federal debt would have been retired in five years (by 1985 or 1986) under that proposal. In the past decade, however, federal trust fund have not fared as well. For example, contributions to the social security fund essentially are borrowed for the regular budget. The trust fund contains federal I.O.U.s. A special tax that raised secure funds exclusively for debt retirement might well get public support. Without federal interest payments, the 1992 federal deficit would have been cut to $114 billion from $314 billion.

Washington banker and attorney Charles W. Steadman, who made the 1982 proposal, now has eliminated the trust fund from his method of paying off the debt. In "The National Debt Conclusion: Establishing the Debt Repayment Plan," (Praeger Publishers, November 1993), Steadman lays out his proposal to eliminate the debt in ten years. Steadman would issue new debt bonds for existing federal government debt securities in a single exchange. A sales tax at the producers' level would be dedicated solely to paying off the new debt bonds on schedule. There would be no trust fund. The rate of the sales tax would be scheduled to raise only enough money each year to call the bonds scheduled for retirement in that year. The debt bonds could be retired only by income from the special purpose tax. Steadman's plan establishes a contract between the government and the bondholders, who would have no claim on general funds of the United States. The Congress would have no way to borrow from the debt retirement receipts. Steadman argues that America must adopt a fundamentally different fiscal structure before the debt burden ultimately causes collapse of the nation's financial structure.

This book shows that poverty is multidimensional and hence needs to be analyzed from a multidisciplinary point of view, which has to include economic, sociological, psychological, anthropological, philosophical, legal and evolutionary perspectives. It also presents the new ideas on poverty analysis that have become very popular in recent years - the participatory approach, the concept of empowerment, the notion of vulnerability and the distinction between chronic and transient poverty.

This volume analyzes changing patterns of authority in the global political economy with an in-depth look at the new roles played by state and non-state actors, and addresses key themes including the provision of global public goods, new modes of regulation and the potential of new institutions for global governance.

The Chilean economy over the last three decades has been a source of continuous interest and fascination for economists, political scientists and development analysts. Moving from a regime with significant protectionist policies to one with a very open economy, embracing free trade reforms, negotiating multilateral and bilateral agreements, the macroeconomic indicators suggest that the economy has prospered. This book explores the macroeconomic picture, complementing this with detailed sectoral evaluation and an analysis of the impacts at regional level. Evidence suggests an increasing need to drill down from the macroeconomic perspective to explore the degree to which economic development has or has not contributed to reducing disparities in level of welfare across the country.

This is the first book to provide detailed analysis of the relationship between higher education and scientific research in key Third World countries. Focusing on four of the most successful of the newly industrializing countries--Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore--the authors examine the intersection between outstanding economic development in these four countries and the higher education and research establishments they have developed. The study combines careful analysis of the current status of scientific research in higher education with detailed ethnographic case studies of scientific work.

Based upon a two-year research effort sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the study presents a multifaceted approach to the subject, evaluating for each country: the organization of the universities and other scientific institutions; the scientists and administrators who work in these institutions; the research productivity and the relationship of basic research to applied uses in industry and commerce; the interactions of these institutions with scholars from Western Europe, Japan, and North America. The authors demonstrate that the nations under study are rapidly building a sophisticated scientific infrastructure and clearly recognize the importance of science for development. The book concludes with an enlightening discussion of how scientists publish their findings in these countries.

Financial markets are not predictable, let alone controllable. The one thing traders and investors can control is their trading tactics, where some can have higher probability of profitability than others. This book explains, by using phase analysis, why some of the indicators, and trading tactics would work better than others, and why some indicators and trading tactics would perform poorly. Emphasis is placed on Awesome Oscillator and Accelerator Oscillator, which are based on Simple Moving Average, a popular tool employed by traders. They are then compared to Moving Average Convergence-Divergence (MACD) and MACD Histogram (MACDH), which are based on exponential moving averages. By varying the parameters of MACD and MACDH, one can change the phase or time delay, and possibly make a larger profit. This book is for practitioners, and includes all MATLAB programs used in the book.

This volume collects a selection of refereed papers of the more than one hundred presented at the InternationalConference MAF 2008 - Mathematicaland Statistical Methods for Actuarial Sciences and Finance. The conference was organised by the Department of Applied Mathematics and theDepartment ofStatisticsoftheUniversityCa'Foscari Venice(Italy), withthec- laborationofthe Department ofEconomics and StatisticalSciences ofthe University ofSalerno(Italy).Itwas heldinVenice, fromMarch 26to28,2008, attheprestigious CavalliFranchettipalace, alongGrand Canal, oftheIstitutoVenetodiScienze, Lettere ed Arti. This conference was the ?rst international edition of a biennial national series begunin2004, whichwas bornof thebrilliantbeliefofthe colleagues -and friends- oftheDepartmentofEconomicsandStatisticalSciences oftheUniversityofSalerno: the idea following which the cooperation between mathematicians and statisticians in working in actuarial sciences, in insurance and in ?nance can improve research on these topics. The proof of this consists in the wide participation in these events. In particular, with reference to the 2008 internationaledition: - More than 150 attendants, both academicians and practitioners; - More than 100 accepted communications, organised in 26 parallel sessions, from authors coming from about twenty countries (namely: Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, USA); - two plenary guest-organised sessions; and - aprestigiouskeynotelecturedeliveredbyProfessorWolfgangHa ]rdleoftheH- boldt Universityof Berlin (Germany)

The Economics of Inflation provides a comprehensive analysis of economic conditions in Germany under the Great Inflation and discusses inflationary conditions in general. The analysis is supported by extensive statistical material.
* For this translation the author thoroughly revised the original work
* Includes an appendix on German economic conditions in the years following the monetary reform, 1923-24.

Labour: A Heterodox Approach provides a theoretical reconstruction of the labour and job market by examining it in a rich historical context. It explores the fundamental implications of the theories of consumption and growth and aims at solving the difficulties raised by the dominant economic theories (neoclassical, Keynesian, supply side) by taking into account the dimension of the historical conflict of the labour market and the public intervention that results from it, such as the construction of a specific legal framework that is to say, labour law. The work focuses on providing a description of conflict and intervention, the market's leading characteristics, and demonstrates that they can be interpreted by introducing two major remedial hypotheses in economic fundamentals. It also contributes to solving several theoretical controversies and highlights the two main perspectives on the economic regulation of the labour market.

Money is an important instrument of calculation: as a unit of account and means of payment, it serves the purpose of exchange. Yet, it is increasingly becoming itself an object of exchange and calculation on financial markets, which tend less to the production and exchange of real goods. The question therefore is: has the economy lost its measure?

This book explores the opportunities and limits of currency cooperation in East Asia. Currency issues play an important role in the region. The Asian crisis of the late 90s was rooted in deficient currency arrangements. The Chinese RMB is not freely convertible yet, but policymakers in China nevertheless aim for a more international role of the Chinese currency. The recent change of direction in Japanese monetary policy caused a drastic depreciation of the Yen and led to warnings against a possible "currency war", thus demonstrating that currency issues can also easily lead to political frictions. Most trade in and with the East Asian zone on the other hand is still conducted in US $. Against this background different modes of currency cooperation serve the goal of smoothing exchange rate fluctuations and capital flows. They are an important element to promote financial stability and to reduce the transaction cost for foreign trade or investment. The contributions of this book analyze the environment and design of currency cooperation in East Asia and their effects from a macro-and microeconomic viewpoint.

As the shock of the 2008 European financial crisis begins to subside, it is time for scholars to step back and analyze the crisis's causes and effects from a multidisciplinary vantage point. Europe in Crisis examines the current state of the European economy, society, and polity, both on the theoretical and political levels, by placing special emphasis on its current crisis. With important contributions from heterodox economists and radical social and political scientists, this innovative new edited collection seeks to evaluate past efforts and policies (mainly since World War II), criticize the failed neoclassical/neoliberal perspectives, and offer alternative strategies and policies to Europe's socioeconomic impasse and misery.

Egypt experienced an economic shift from a managed economic strategy to one of market-oriented resource allocation starting in the 1970s, and in 1987 signed a stabilization program agreement with the International Monetary Fund. This is an overview of these structural changes experienced by the Egyptian economy in the 70s and 80s. The main tool to assess the effectiveness of the policies and to evaluate growth prospects under different policy scenarios is an integrated macroeconomic-energy demand-input/output model. Four different policy scenarios are explored.

This book studies the sustainability and optimality of public debt under different scenarios: the closed economy, the small open economy, and a two-country setting. Sustainability refers to the existence and the stability of the long-run equilibrium. Optimality relates to the path of public debt that maximizes discounted utility. The analysis is conducted within the framework of the Solow model, the overlapping generations model and the infinite horizon model. The government can follow different strategies, it either fixes the deficit ratio or the tax rate. As a result, a fixed deficit ratio generally can be sustained. By contrast, a fixed tax rate generally cannot be sustained. Depending on the chosen fiscal strategy, there exists either an optimal deficit ratio or an optimal tax rate that maximizes the sum of consumption and government purchases per capita.

Challenges facing central bankers are expertly examined and analyzed. The book explores monetary policy and financial crisis as well as insolvency, collective action clauses, international mediation, and management of central banks. The author has worked as an economist at the Monetary and Economic Department of the Bank for International Settlements and as an international mediator for the Secretariat of the G10 Ministers and Governors.

This is the fourth volume of Paul Davidson's major contributions to the economics and policy debates of our times, with writings on the debates surrounding the interpretation of the General Theory. The book contains professional articles, newspaper columns and papers that explain why Keynes' General Theory, as developed by Post Keynesian theorists, and provides important policy implications for the economic problems of the twenty-first century global economy.

This book examines the objectives of public debt management and the re-emerging issue of separating monetary policy formulation from fiscal and debt management. The recent Great Recession has resulted in a rethink of the objectives and working of macroeconomics, and in many countries, including India, has led to the scope of fiscal operations being expanded and debt-to-GDP ratios increasing significantly. Consequently, debt management has encountered considerable difficulties, and the need for coordination between monetary and debt management has assumed greater significance. The book discusses the important issue of the independence of central banks and the need for coordination between debt managers, monetary authorities and finance ministries if debt operations are separated from monetary management.

This book brings together leading economists from continental Europe, the U.S. and the U.K. to examine the slow growth and other problems experienced by the Eurozone in it's early years, and the challenges which is now faces. The authors investigate the operation of monetary and fiscal policy in the Eurozone, the extent of structural reform and the reasons for it, and other topics from the possible inflation increases in the 2002 notes and coin changeover to financial integration.

A careful basic theoretical and econometric analysis of the factors determining the real exchange rates of Canada, the U.K., Japan, France and Germany with respect to the United States is conducted. The resulting conclusion is that real exchange rates are almost entirely determined by real factors relating to growth and technology such as oil and commodity prices, international allocations of world investment across countries, and underlying terms of trade changes. Unanticipated money supply shocks, calculated in five alternative ways have virtually no effects. A Blanchard-Quah VAR analysis also indicates that the effects of real shocks predominate over monetary shocks by a wide margin. The implications of these facts for the conduct of monetary policy in countries outside the U.S. are then explored leading to the conclusion that all countries, to avoid exchange rate overshooting, have tended to automatically follow the same monetary policy as the United States. The history of world monetary policy is reviewed along with the determination of real exchange rates within the Euro Area.

The European Economic and Monetary Union comprises twelve member states and forms a currency area of considerable size and, until now, remarkable stability. Still, however, discussion is going on whether it can survive as an institution providing the highest degree of monetary integration which is a single monetary policy for a group of member countries with divergent economic performance. It is also questioned whether it can withstand financial crises in international markets and contribute to the stability of the global financial system. The book addresses these questions with special emphasis on the need for new forms of economic policy coordination.

Foreign exchange black markets in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica and Peru were studied during the period 1990-93. This group of case studies presents a broad view of the phenomenon in Latin America at the beginning of the 1990s. This is not a traditional economic analysis of foreign exchange markets, for many reasons. Most importantly, since black markets are illegal by definition, they are not recorded in offical statistics and the participants are not easily identified. Nevertheless, these markets are often widely used and well known to people living in the Latin American countries, so it is possible to paint a reasonably accurate picture of them. The work is based largely on interviews with black market participants in each country. This primary means of collecting information was desirable because of the general lack of published sources of data or other records; though published information was also used when available. The book discusses foreign exchange black markets from a variety of perspectives, looking at who participates in them, how they function, and what impacts they have on local economies.