How do governments make key decisions on vital economic questions of national importance? Can they advance the national interest on issues that are highly politicized? How do they respond to competing pressures from the international and domestic environments? Forming Economic Policy explores these and other questions in Canada and Mexico, two very different countries which share a common vulnerability to the world economy. Using the case of energy, the book argues that policymakers will address the national interest, but only episodically with the onset of major national crises that invoke a higher and sustained sense of national priorities. These crises are frequently induced by the interaction of domestic and foreign political and economic forces. The conclusions are surprising. Despite profound political and economic differences between these two countries, policymakers have behaved in remarkably similar ways when arriving at key policy decisions. The explanation – which integrates two competing views of politics, the pluralist and the statist – has important implications with regard to the political processes in those states which, like Canada and Mexico, are exposed to the world economy and face problems of political legitimacy at home. Forming Economic Policy will appeal to students and teachers of political economy and comparative politics as well as to those interested in the politics of energy policy.

Going for Growth 2021 identifies country-specific structural policy priorities for the recovery across OECD and key non-member countries (Argentina, Brazil, The People’s Republic of China, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia and South Africa). It frames the main policy challenges of the current juncture along three main areas: building resilience; facilitating reallocation and boosting productivity growth for all; and supporting people in transition.

Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman once noted that free immigration cannot coexist with a welfare state. A welfare state with open borders might turn into a haven for poor immigrants, which would place such a fiscal burden on the state that native-born voters would support less-generous benefits or restricted immigration, or both. And yet a welfare state with an aging population might welcome young skilled immigrants. The preferences of the native-born population toward migration depend on the skill and age composition of the immigrants, and migration policies in a political-economy framework may be tailored accordingly. This book examines how social benefits-immigrations political economy conflicts are resolved, with an empirical application to data from Europe and the developed countries, integrating elements from population, international, public, and political economics into a unified static and dynamic framework. Using a static analytical framework to examine intra-generational distribution, the authors first focus on the skill composition of migrants in both free and restricted immigration policy regimes, drawing on empirical research from EU-15 and non-EU-15 states. The authors then offer theoretical analyses of similar issues in dynamic overlapping generations settings, studying not only intragenerational but also intergenerational aspects, including old-young dependency ratios and skilled-unskilled conflicts. Finally, they examine overall gains from or costs of migration in both host and source countries and the race to the bottom argument of tax competition between states in the presence of free migration.

A leading economist trains a lens on his own discipline to uncover when it fails and when it works.

An examination of long-term trends in capital formation and financing in the U.S., this study is organized primarily around the principal capital-using sectors of the economy: agriculture, mining and manufacturing, public utilities, non-farm residential real estate, and government. The analysis summarizes major trends in real capital formation and financing, and the factors that determined the trends. Originally published in 1961. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The industrialized world has long been rocked by economic crises, often caused by policy makers who are guided by ideology rather than cold, hard analysis. WRONG examines the worst economic policy blunders of the last 250 years, providing a valuable guide book for policy makers... and the citizens who elect them.