front cover of Generational Accounting around the World
Generational Accounting around the World
Edited by Alan J. Auerbach, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, and Willi Leibfritz
University of Chicago Press, 1999
The realities of mounting government debt, tax burdens, and an aging population raise serious concerns about the financial legacy confronting future generations. How great a fiscal burden will current policies leave to subsequent generations, and how might changes in those policies alter the intergenerational distribution of public welfare? Generational accounting has recently emerged as a robust new method of fiscal analysis and planning designed to assess the long-term sustainability of fiscal policy and to measure the extent of the financial load ultimately borne by present and future generations. A seminal contribution to public economics, generational accounting has already been adopted by 23 nations around the world.

Combining the latest and most extensive country-by-country generational analyses with a comprehensive review of generational accounting's innovative methodology, these papers are a consummate resource for economists, political scientists, and policy makers concerned with fiscal health and responsibility.

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front cover of Geography and Ownership as Bases for Economic Accounting
Geography and Ownership as Bases for Economic Accounting
Edited by Robert E. Baldwin, Robert E. Lipsey, and J. David Richardson
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Geography and Ownership as Bases for Economic Accounting provides a forum for leading specialists in trade and international economics to explore whether changes in the world economy have increased the usefulness of international accounts drawn up on the basis of ownership rather than on geography. The papers in this volume suggest that ownership-based national accounts are helpful in understanding trade and financial transactions among globalized enterprises. Individual chapters emphasize this perspective through accounting exercises, studies of individual countries, and studies of foreign direct investment and its relation to national economies.

This volume gives trade and international economists the data and resources to renew discussion of this timely issue.



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The Great Depression
An International Disaster of Perverse Economic Policies
Thomas E. Hall and J. David Ferguson
University of Michigan Press, 1998
The Great Depression was the worst economic catastrophe in modern history. Not only did it cause massive worldwide unemployment, but it also led to the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, World War II in Europe, and the tragic deaths of tens of millions of people. This book describes the sequence of policy errors committed by powerful, well-meaning people in several countries, which, in combination with the gold standard in place at the time, caused the disaster. In addition, it details attempts to reduce unemployment in the United States by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and in Germany by Hitler's National Socialist economic policies.
A comprehensive economic and historical explanation of the events pertaining to the Depression, this book begins by describing the economic setting in the major industrialized countries during the 1920s and the gold standard that linked theory economies together. It then discusses the triggering event that started the economic decline--the Federal Reserve's credit tightening in reaction to perceived overspeculation in the U.S. stock market. The policy bungling that transformed the recession into the Great Depression is detailed: Smoot Hawley, the Federal Reserve's disastrous adherence to the real bills doctrine, and Hoover's 1932 tax hike. This is followed by a detailed description of the New Deal's shortcomings in trying to end the Depression, along with a discussion of the National Socialist economic programs in Germany. Finally, the factors that ended the Depression are examined.
This book will appeal to economists, historians, and those interested in business conditions who would like to know more about the causes and consequences of the Great Depression. It will be particularly useful as a supplementary text in economic history courses.
Thomas E. Hall and J. David Ferguson are both Professors of Economics, Miami University.
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front cover of The Great Inflation
The Great Inflation
The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking
Edited by Michael D. Bordo and Athanasios Orphanides
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policy makers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources, thereby raising productivity.

This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and ’80s, which saw rising inflation in many nations, and which propelled interest rates across the developing world into the double digits. In the decades since, the immediate cause of the period’s rise in inflation has been the subject of considerable debate. Among the areas of contention are the role of monetary policy in driving inflation and the implications this had both for policy design and for evaluating the performance of those who set the policy. Here, contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on the ways in which the lessons of the Great Inflation were absorbed and applied to today’s global and increasingly complex economic environment.

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Growth
A History and a Reckoning
Daniel Susskind
Harvard University Press, 2024

A vivid account of the past, present, and future of economic growth, showing how and why we must continue to pursue it while responding to the challenges it creates.

Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from the struggle for subsistence and made our lives far healthier and longer. Yet prosperity has come at a price: environmental destruction, desolation of local cultures, the rise of vast inequalities and destabilizing technologies. Faced with such damage, many now claim that the only way forward is through “degrowth,” deliberately shrinking our economic footprint. But to abandon humanity’s progress would be folly. Instead, Daniel Susskind argues, we must keep growth but redirect it, making it better reflect what we truly value.

In a sweeping analysis full of historical insight, Susskind shows how policymaking came to revolve around a single-minded quest for greater GDP. This is a surprisingly recent development: economic growth was barely discussed until the second half of the twentieth century. And our understanding of what drives it is more recent still. Only lately have we come to see how humankind emerged from its millennia of stagnation: through the sustained discovery of powerful and productive new ideas.

This insight undermines the mantra that “we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet,” for the world of ideas is infinitely vast. Yet growth’s critics are right to insist that we can no longer focus on its upsides alone. We must confront the tradeoffs, Susskind contends: sometimes, societies will have to deliberately pursue less growth for the sake of other goals. These will be moral decisions, not simply economic ones, demanding the engagement not just of politicians and experts but of all citizens.

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