Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis
Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis, edited by Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi, is available now from the University of Chicago Press.
The last recession refocused the attention of policymakers and academic economists on the importance of tax rates and government spending, and especially on the size and sensitivity of fiscal multipliers, which determine how fiscal policies will influence economic growth. This NBER conference volume considers the measurement of various government spending multipliers and reports estimates of their size. It also explores the consequences of debt reduction through decreased government spending and through increased taxes and it examines how the short-term political forces driving fiscal policy might be balanced with aspects of the long-term planning that governs monetary policy.
Alesina directs the NBER's Program on Political Economy and is a professor of economics at Harvard University. Giavazzi is a Research Associate in the NBER's Program on International Finance and Macroeconomics and a professor of economics at Bocconi University in Italy. This volume costs $110.00.
Political Arithmetic: Simon Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics
Political Arithmetic: Simon Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics, by Robert William Fogel, Enid M. Fogel, Mark Guglielmo, and Nathanial Grotte, is the most recent volume in the NBER's Series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development. In this monograph, Fogel and his collaborators tell the story of economist Simon Kuznets and the founding of the National Bureau of Economic Research, along with the creation of the concept of Gross National Product (GNP), which enabled us to measure the performance of entire economies. The product of a lifetime of studying the workings of economies and skillfully employing the tools of economics, Political Arithmetic is simultaneously a history of a key period of economic thought and a testament to the power of applied ideas.
Fogel directed the NBER's Program on the Development of the American Economy for many years, and remains a program member today. He also directs the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago. This monograph costs $32.00.