Full Description
This edited volume presents the key unresolved debates in monetary macroeconomics, covering the five topics of budget, trade, taxes, exchange rates and monetary policy. For each topic, there are two authors — one arguing for a certain policy and one against. The book takes an approach eschewing mathematics or econometrics, instead presenting arguments in the spirit of political economy - while incorporating the most recent thinking in macroeconomics. This approach, combined with the objective of encouraging debate, makes the book ideal reading for students of monetary macroeconomics, researchers seeking alternative views, and the general public.
Contents
1. Introduction - Pressman and Smithin.- I. Budget.- 2. Keynes after Piketty: Some Unsettling Questions Regarding Government Budget Deficits - Steven Pressman.- 3. Some Unsettling Questions Regarding Government Budget Deficits: The National Debt is Irrelevant - David Barrows.- II. Trade.- 4. The Ambiguous Effects of Pursuing Current Account Surpluses - Nina Eichacker.- 5. Does a Current Account Deficit Indicate Bad Economic Policy? - William Scarth.- III. Taxes.- 6. How Taxes Can Be Used as a Deflationary Tool - Joelle Leclaire.- 7. What is the Sign of the Balanced-Budget Multiplier? - John Smithin.- IV. Exchange Rates.- 8. A Modern Defence of Flexible Exchange Rates and Monetary Policy Rules - Eric Kam and Mohammed Moshin.- 9. The Case for Fixed Exchange Rates Regimes: What For and in What Form? - Adrien Faudot.- V. Monetary Policy.- 10. Should the Implementation of Monetary Policy Be Subject to Rules? - Martin Watts and George Pantelopolous.- 11. Rules Are (Sometimes) Meant to Be Broken: Arguments in Favor of Discretionary Monetary Policy - Sarah F. Small.
