Product Description: At the 2005 World Summit, United Nations Member States strongly supported a fair globalization and the attendant goals of full and productive employment and decent work for all, particularly through policies and efforts designed to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty and hunger in half by 2015...read more

This ambitious book seeks both to revive and revise the idea of ‘functional finance’. Followers of this doctrine believe that government budgets should concentrate solely on the macroeconomic impact on the economy, rather than reflecting a concern for sound finance and budgetary discipline. Reinventing Functional Finance examines the origins of this idea, and then considers it in a modern context. The authors explore the concept of NAIRU and argue that modern economies can operate at the level of full employment without provoking unmanageable inflation. They also contend that budget deficits do not have the deleterious effects commonly ascribed to them; the belief that they do rests on a misunderstanding of modern money. In this context, they highlight the relevance of Abba Lerner’s famous dictum, ‘money is a creature of the State’. The authors also debate the merits of various proposals for ‘Employer of Last Resort’ programs, which combine automatic stabilizers with the buffer stock principle. The book boasts an array of eminent contributors which include, among others, James Duesenberry, Robert Eisner, Robert Heilbroner, Richard Musgrave, Edward Nell and Randall Wray. Financial economists, politicians, policymakers and bankers will welcome this provocative and refreshing book which challenges established economic thinking.

(view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

This important book goes beyond generalizations and takes a hard-headed look at the real strengths and weaknesses of Keynesian demand management and supply side economics. Keynesianism has failed to reconcile high levels of competitiveness with full employment. This was confirmed in the 1980s by the performance of the UK, the US and West Germany. Sweeping de-regulation has not proved to be an adequate solution. The book shows how effective supply conditions could supplement Keynesian demand management to achieve sustainable levels of high employment. The measures advocated include a system of industrial relations which allows high wages and job security in return for acceptance of a high pace of technological and organizational change; the promotion of skill development as well as intra-firm training programmes; the formation and encouragement of co-operation between different regions. It is argued that the supportive institutions, coupled with effective demand policies would succeed in marrying high employment with internationally competitive production.

Product Description: Full employment policy recommendations are highlighted in this book, based on insights which have been generated in economics for the last 15 years by means of theoretical as well as empirical research. The book consists of two parts; the first part emphasises employment problems in The Netherlands and Belgium, two small open economies which performed badly in the realisation of full employment when compared with other small open economies...read more