This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Across the political spectrum, disgruntled Americans have two things in common: Reaganomics as an economics policy has caused most of their economic problems; Reaganomics as a political strategy has rendered their government dysfunctional. Reaganomics vs the Modern Economy defines the modern economy including the critical contributions of the public sector. It describes the history of political frustrations and resistance to government that led to Ronald Reagan's election. We learn how market forces, not Reaganomics, ended stagflation in the 1980s. But confusion and Reagan's personal popularity continue to produce unworkable policies. The five categories of government economic functions are determined by inadequacies in private sector markets: total market irrelevance, internal market defects, predominant market insufficiency, acute market insufficiency, and general market insufficiency. The public sector must be a component of our modern economy if we are to overcome inadequate employment, the effects of income and wealth maldistribution, the excessive influence of the financial sector, and unaffordable health care and post-secondary education and training. Michael Gilbert shows how we can reduce dissension and division in the country by implementing policies that meet the requirements of our modern economy. The failures of Reaganomics are our guide for what not to do Book jacket.

"Reagan and the Economy" is the most comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date critique of Reaganomics, the revolutionary economic and political program of the 1980s whose effects are only beginning to be felt. In accessible, non-technical language, Michael J. Boskin describes the Reagan economic program as it was conceived and as it evolved over the first six years of the Reagan presidency, showing its place in the changing world of economic thought. His aim is to dispel the myths about Reaganomics by taking a hard look at the actual data and evaluating the performance of the economy. Many of his findings run counter to conventional wisdom. Boskin's greatest contribution is his analysis of "supply-side" economics, the new school of economic thinking that produced several tax cuts during the Reagan Presidency. He analyzes the effects of these policies in light of the economic conditions and alternatives available at the time, and finds the supply-side tax cuts to be partially successful. These findings form a comprehensive and accurate review of Reaganomics. "Reagan and the Economy" is essential to understanding the political and economic choices the nation will face in the coming years. -- From publisher's description.

The best guide yet to the practical aims and consequences of Reaganomics.--Philadelphia Enquirer

Beyond Reaganomics, a sequel to An Inquiry into the Poverty of Economics, provides an assessment of recent economic policies through the Reagan administration years, placing them in an analytical as well as ethical context.

The arguments over the economic policies of the Reagan Administration will continue until sufficient time has elapsed for a consensus to be possible. In the meantime, it is necessary for contemporary scholars to record their opinions as a base for the consensus. Campagna has recorded his conclusions based on considerable research on Reagan Administration policies. He begins by describing what was planned by the government. From there, he discusses what actually happened, and devotes the remainder of the work to his opinion of what has been left with which the future must deal. Campagna concludes that the Reagan economic policies failed. He establishes a position for others to attack or defend in their own publications in the continuing argument.