Policy

Monetary Policy Fiscal Policy

The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Economics 302: Macroeconomic Analysis

Fiscal Policy

Background:

Blanchard, chapter 17 (pp. 364–368); chapter 23 (pp. 490–503); chapter 24 (pp. 518–525); chapter 26 (pp. 550–568).

Analysis:

Walsh, Carl E. "The Role of Fiscal Policy," Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Economic Letter #2002-26, September 6, 2002.
"The Price of Profligacy," The Economist, January 23, 2003.
"George Maynard Bush," The Economist, September 1, 2005. [PDF version]

In The News:

Rahn, Richard W. "The Deficit Bugaboo" Commentary, The Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2004.
Ip, Greg. "Why Today's Soaring Deficits Don't Inspire Fears," The Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2004.
Andrews, Edmund L. and David E. Rosenbaum. "The Big Picture May Seem Rosy, but the Deficit Is in the Details," The New York Times, February 8, 2005.
Bernasek, Anna. "The Outer Limits of National Debt," The New York Times, May 1, 2005.

Application: Social Security

Jones, Charles I. "The Fiscal Problem of the 21st Century," Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Economic Letter #2003-27, September 19, 2003.
Stevenson, Richard W. "Untangling the Debate on Social Security," The New York Times, January 9, 2005.
Wessel, David. "The Basics of Social Security," The Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2005.
Cave, Damien. "How to Get Young People to Care About Old Age," The New York Times, March 20, 2005.

Going Further:

Taylor, John B. "Reassessing Discretionary Fiscal Policy," The Journal of Economic Perspectives, v. 14, n. 3, Summer 2000, pp. 21–36.
"Helping Hands, Grabbing Hands," Survey of the 20^th Century, The Economist, September 9, 1999.
Madrick, Jeff. "Does Big Government Hurt Economic Growth?" The New York Times, April 15, 2004.