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Keynesian economics are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand strongly influences economic output and inflation. In the Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy. Instead, it is influenced by a host of factors – sometimes behaving erratically – affecting production, employment, and inflation.
This aims to be a complete article list of economics topics:
In economics and political science, fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection and expenditure to influence a country's economy. The use of government revenue expenditures to influence macroeconomic variables developed in reaction to the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the previous laissez-faire approach to economic management became unworkable. Fiscal policy is based on the theories of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, whose Keynesian economics theorized that government changes in the levels of taxation and government spending influence aggregate demand and the level of economic activity. Fiscal and monetary policy are the key strategies used by a country's government and central bank to advance its economic objectives. The combination of these policies enables these authorities to target inflation and to increase employment. Additionally, it is designed to try to keep GDP growth at 2%–3% and the unemployment rate near the natural unemployment rate of 4%–5%. This implies that fiscal policy is used to stabilize the economy over the course of the business cycle.
In economics, the fiscal multiplier is the ratio of change in national income arising from a change in government spending. More generally, the exogenous spending multiplier is the ratio of change in national income arising from any autonomous change in spending. When this multiplier exceeds one, the enhanced effect on national income may be called the multiplier effect. The mechanism that can give rise to a multiplier effect is that an initial incremental amount of spending can lead to increased income and hence increased consumption spending, increasing income further and hence further increasing consumption, etc., resulting in an overall increase in national income greater than the initial incremental amount of spending. In other words, an initial change in aggregate demand may cause a change in aggregate output that is a multiple of the initial change.
The economic policy of governments covers the systems for setting levels of taxation, government budgets, the money supply and interest rates as well as the labour market, national ownership, and many other areas of government interventions into the economy.
Within the budgetary process, deficit spending is the amount by which spending exceeds revenue over a particular period of time, also called simply deficit, or budget deficit; the opposite of budget surplus. The term may be applied to the budget of a government, private company, or individual. Government deficit spending was first identified as a necessary economic tool by John Maynard Keynes in the wake of the Great Depression. It is a central point of controversy in economics, as discussed below.
Public finance is the study of the role of the government in the economy. It is the branch of economics that assesses the government revenue and government expenditure of the public authorities and the adjustment of one or the other to achieve desirable effects and avoid undesirable ones. The purview of public finance is considered to be threefold, consisting of governmental effects on:
- The efficient allocation of available resources;
- The distribution of income among citizens; and
- The stability of the economy.
A government budget is a financial statement presenting the government's proposed revenues and spending for a financial year. The government budget balance, also alternatively referred to as general government balance, public budget balance, or public fiscal balance, is the overall difference between government revenues and spending. A positive balance is called a government budget surplus, and a negative balance is a government budget deficit. A budget is prepared for each level of government and takes into account public social security obligations.
A country's gross government debt is the financial liabilities of the government sector. Changes in government debt over time reflect primarily borrowing due to past government deficits. A deficit occurs when a government's expenditures exceed revenues. Government debt may be owed to domestic residents, as well as to foreign residents. If owed to foreign residents, that quantity is included in the country's external debt.
Government spending or expenditure includes all government consumption, investment, and transfer payments. In national income accounting, the acquisition by governments of goods and services for current use, to directly satisfy the individual or collective needs of the community, is classed as government final consumption expenditure. Government acquisition of goods and services intended to create future benefits, such as infrastructure investment or research spending, is classed as government investment. These two types of government spending, on final consumption and on gross capital formation, together constitute one of the major components of gross domestic product.
Fiscalism is a term sometimes used to refer the economic theory that the government should rely on fiscal policy as the main instrument of macroeconomic policy. Fiscalism in this sense is contrasted with monetarism, which is associated with reliance on monetary policy. Fiscalists reject monetarism in a non-convertible floating rate system as inefficient if not also ineffective
Abraham "Abba" Ptachya Lerner was a Russian-born American-British economist.
Modern Monetary Theory or Modern Money Theory (MMT) is a heterodox macroeconomic theory that describes currency as a public monopoly and unemployment as evidence that a currency monopolist is overly restricting the supply of the financial assets needed to pay taxes and satisfy savings desires. MMT is opposed to the mainstream understanding of macroeconomic theory, and has been criticized by many mainstream economists.
Financial repression comprises "policies that result in savers earning returns below the rate of inflation" to allow banks to "provide cheap loans to companies and governments, reducing the burden of repayments." It can be particularly effective at liquidating government debt denominated in domestic currency. It can also lead to large expansions in debt "to levels evoking comparisons with the excesses that generated Japan’s lost decade and the 1997 Asian financial crisis."
Confederate war finance involved the various means, fiscal and monetary, through which the Confederate States of America financed its war effort during the American Civil War of 1861-1865. As the war lasted for nearly the entire existence of the Confederacy, military considerations dominated national finance.
Deficit reduction in the United States refers to taxation, spending, and economic policy debates and proposals designed to reduce the Federal budget deficit. Government agencies including the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB),and the U.S. Treasury Department have reported that the federal government is facing a series of important long-run financing challenges, mainly driven by an aging population, rising healthcare costs per person, and rising interest payments on the national debt.
In macroeconomics, chartalism is a theory of money that argues that money originated historically with states' attempts to direct economic activity rather than as a spontaneous solution to the problems with barter or as a means with which to tokenize debt, and that fiat currency has value in exchange because of sovereign power to levy taxes on economic activity payable in the currency they issue.
This glossary of economics is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in economics, its sub-disciplines, and related fields.
The National Emergency Employment Defense Act, aka the NEED Act, is a monetary reform proposal submitted by Congressman Dennis Kucinich in 2011, in the United States. The bill has failed to gain any co-supporters and was not introduced to the floor of the house.
The Swiss sovereign money initiative of June 2018, also known as Vollgeld, was a citizens' (popular) initiative in Switzerland intended to give the Swiss National Bank the sole authority to create money.
References
- Forstater, Mathew (12 August 1999), Functional Finance and Full Employment: Lessons from Lerner for Today
- Lerner, Abba P., Economics of Employment, McGraw Hill (1951)