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.

This book discusses national development planning in the context of a globalized world economy. National economic development planning, the process of defining strategic economic objectives for a country and designing policies and institutional frameworks to attain them, was popular in many countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Over time it lost its appeal. More recently, with globalization accelerating and economic competition increasing, it is making a comeback in different countries under different forms. National planning in this new era is different than the earlier quantitative planning approaches. It employs different tools, such as strategic visions and action plans, revived forms of physical infrastructure planning, industrial policy, and cluster policy. Built on the research of international scholars with firsthand knowledge of the countries in question, this volume presents and evaluates current national planning strategies and policy worldwide. It will be of interest to both academicians who study and teach globalization and development as well as policy makers who may use it as a reference as they contemplate their own strategies.

This book studies the international coordination of monetary and fiscal policies in the world economy. It carefully discusses the process of policy competition and the structure of policy cooperation. As to policy competition, the focus is on monetary and fiscal competition between Europe and America. Similarly, as to policy cooperation, the focus is on monetary and fiscal cooperation between Europe and America. The spillover effects of monetary policy are negative while the spillover effects of fiscal policy are positive. The policy targets are price stability and full employment. The policy makers follow either cold-turkey or gradualist strategies. Policy expectations are adaptive or rational. The world economy consists of two, three or more regions. 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 in Lisbon. Other parts were presented 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.

Wolfgang Streeck has written extensively on comparative political economy and institutional theory. In this book he addresses some of the key issues in this field: the role of history in institutional analysis, the dynamics of slow institutional change, the limitations of rational design and economic-functionalist explanations of institutional stability, and the recurrent difficulties of restraining the effects of capitalism on social order. In the classification of the 'Varieties of Capitalism' school, Germany has always been taken as the chief exemplar of a 'European', coordinated market economy. Streeck explores to what extent Germany actually conforms to this description. His argument is supported by original empirical research on wage-setting and wage structure, the organization of business and labor in business associations and trade unions, social policy, public finance, and corporate governance. From this evidence, Bringing Capitalism Back In traces the current liberalization of the postwar economy of democratic capitalism by means of an historically-grounded approach to institutional change. This is an important book in comparative political economy and key reading across the social sciences for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Political Economy, Sociology, comparative business systems.

Destined to become the standard guide to the economic policy of the United States during the Reagan era, this book provides an authoritative record of the economic reforms of the 1980s. In his introduction, Martin Feldstein provides compelling analysis of policies with which he was closely involved as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Reagan administration: monetary and exchange rate policy, tax policy, and budget issues. Other leading economists and policymakers examine a variety of domestic and international issues, including monetary and exchange rate policy, regulation and antitrust, as well as trade, tax, and budget policies. The contributors to this volume are Alberto Alesina, Phillip Areeda, Elizabeth Bailey, William F. Baxter, C. Fred Bergsten, James Burnley, Geoffrey Carliner, Christopher DeMuth, Douglas W. Elmendorf, Thomas O. Enders, Martin Feldstein, Jeffrey A. Frankel, Don Fullerton, William M. Isaac, Paul L Joskow, Paul Krugman, Robert E. Litan, Russell B. Long, Michael Mussa, William A. Niskanen, Roger G. Noll, Lionel H. Olmer, Rudolph Penner, William Poole, James M. Poterba, Harry M. Reasoner, William R. Rhodes, J. David Richardson, Charles Schultze, Paula Stern, David Stockman, William Taylor, James Tobin, W. Kip Viscusi, Paul A. Volcker, Charles E. Walker, David A. Wise, and Richard G. Woodbury.