Research Catalog

Title

Towards a reconstruction of macro-economics : problems of theory and policy / William Fellner.

Author

Fellner, William, 1905-1983.

Publication

Washington : American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, ©1976.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

150 pages; 23 cm

Summary

This short book is an inquiry into the theoretical and policy implications of attaining macroeconomic equilibrium within the context of sustained economic growth. The author argues that merely adding to or amending the corpus of theory and policy is not enough. Instead, Fellner suggests a "reconstruction", implying that he feels the problems that face macroeconomics are sufficiently serious enough to have weakened the structure, such that dismantling, re-design, and then rebuilding are necessary. Indeed he offers a stark alternative if this warning is not heeded, namely "comprehensively controlled societies, administered with reliance on significantly enlarged police power". Whilst the prediction and his subsequent empirical investigation is particularly concerned with the US economy, the parallels are there to be drawn with many other industrialised countries. -- from http://www.jstor.org (Nov. 25, 2015).

Subject

• Macroeconomics
• Economic policy
• Doctrines économiques
• Politique économique
• Economic policy
• Macroeconomics
• Makroökonomie

Note

• Includes index.

Bibliography (note)

• Bibliography: p. 141-145.

Contents

Part I. Main theme and the nature of the approach. 1. Sketching the content --- 2. Combining methods of approach --- 3. Unconvincing objections ---- Part II. Fundamentals in an elementary analytical framework. 1. Reorientation of macro-theory during the 1930's --- 2. Imprint of a past era --- 3. Meaning of Say's law in a simple quantity-theoretical framework --- 4. Basic elements of the Keynesian system and the Cambridge equation --- 5. Income-expenditure or stock-to-expenditure approach --- 6. Interdependence with the rest of the world ---- Part III. Employment theory and the price level. 1. Generalization of the argument against reliance on Say's law --- 2. Valid description of the process behind Say's law --- 3. Alleged real-wage equilibrating effect of inflation --- 4. Phillips trade-off in view of the American experience --- 5. Trends in real wages and in real profits during the recent inflationary period --- 6. Uselessness of the distinction between voluntary and involuntary unemployment --- 7. Employment policy and alternative price-level targets --- 7. Success and failure in past periods ---- Part IV. Induced innovations, distributive shares, and sustainable employment along the growth path. 1. Rates of return and distributive shares --- 2. Innovations and income distribution --- 3. Offsetting tendencies --- 4. Problem of incompatible income claims ---- Part V. Outline of a macroeconomic equilibrium system and the problem of shortcuts. 1. Nature of a macro-equilibrium system --- 2. Unnumbered equation for the supply of output --- 3. Demand slide: symbols and implications --- 4. Finding the values of policy variables ensuring equality of aggregate demand with the supply defined in section 2 --- 5. Extreme simplifications along quantity-theoretical lines --- 6. Extreme simplification along stagnationist lines --- 7. Leanings contrasted with extreme simplifications ---- Part VI. Monetarist and neo-Keynesian leanings: useful or misleading labels. 1. Simplifications involving interest rate effects --- 2. What is behind a simple regularity --- 3. Appraising the monetarist emphasis on M targets --- 4. Labels that misdirect attention ---- Part VII. Policy problems, present and future. 1. Immediate antecedents: overexpansion and commodity shortages --- 2. Main difficulty: the public's self-justifying skepticism about policy makers --- 3. Limited but improving foresight: introductory observations on the Troika forecasts --- 4. Forecasting record from 1962-1975 --- 5. Break in the mid-1960's --- 6. Gradualism and abruptness --- 7. Subsistence guarantees, market power, and the problem of measured unemployment --- 8. Turning from the spurious distinction between voluntary and involuntary unemployment to substantive problems --- 9. Alternative --- 10. Future of macroeconomics.

ISBN

• 084471318X
• 9780844713182

LCCN

76021162

OCLC

• ocm02366586
• 2366586
• SCSB-158848

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library