Hassan Bougrine, Louis-Philippe Rochon and the expert contributors to this book explore issues of economic growth and full employment; presenting a clear explanation to stagnation, recessions and crises, including the latest Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8. With a central focus on the role played by government spending, deficits and debt as well as the setting of interest rates, the chapters propose alternative policies that can be used by central banks and fiscal authorities to deal with problems of income inequality, unemployment and slow productivity.

Latin American neo-structuralism is a cutting-edge, regionally focused economic theory with broad implications for macroeconomics and development economics. Roberto Frenkel has spent five decades developing the theory's core arguments and expanding their application throughout the discipline, revolutionizing our understanding of high inflation and hyperinflation, disinflation programs, and the behavior of foreign exchange markets as well as financial and currency crises in emerging economies. The essays in this collection assess Latin American neo-structuralism's theoretical contributions and viability as the world's economies evolve. The authors discuss Frenkel's work in relation to pricing decisions, inflation and stabilization policy, development and income distribution in Latin America, and macroeconomic policy for economic growth. An entire section focuses on finance and crisis, and the volume concludes with a neo-structuralist analysis of general aspects of economic development. For those seeking a comprehensive introduction to contemporary Latin American economic thought, this collection not only explicates the intricate work of one of its greatest practitioners but also demonstrates its impact on the growth of economics.

In order to fulfil the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics and Finance, at the University of St.Gallen, after the completion of the course-work and research phases, I hereby to provide the cumulative dissertation. The dissertation consists of three essays on macroeconomic policy, development economics and economic growth. The first chapter examines empirically the relationship between the cyclical pattern of fiscal policy in democratic developing countries and their quality of political institutions. This chapter uses updated data to analyse 63 developing countries from 1980 to 2013 and robustly shows that pro-cyclical fiscal policy exist in both democratic and non-democratic developing countries. The main contributions of this chapter are controlling the endogeneity issue by using the instrumental variable method and investigating the interactions between political institutions variables and the cyclicality of fiscal policy. The results suggest that an improvement in the level of institutional quality plays an important role to restrain pro-cyclical fiscal policy. These effects are larger in democratic countries than non-democratic ones. Additionally, the maturity and stability of a democratic regime influence in restraining the implementation of pro-cyclical fiscal policy. The second chapter studies the effects of demographic transition and unfunded pension system in affecting the economic growth of Thailand. The chapter adds the aspect of the informal sector and investments in children's education into the Overlapping Generation (OLG) model. We modify the model to allow individuals heterogeneity in their ages and exogenously assign to work either in the formal or informal sector. The results from our model suggest that the non-contribution pension system or old-age security schemes hinder the economic growth of the economy with a high share of the informal sector and low fertility rate like Tha.