Amit Bhaduri

The Impact of Globalization on Macroeconomic Theory and Policy

7 Seiten · 2,16 EUR
(Juni 2006)

Ich bin mit den AGB, insbesondere Punkt 10 (ausschließlich private Nutzung, keine Weitergabe an Dritte), einverstanden und erkenne an, dass meine Bestellung nicht widerrufen werden kann.

From the Introduction:

Through years of systematic teaching, writing and research, Professor Peter Kalmbach has emphasised to his students and readers a crucial aspect of macroeconomic policy. He has argued that macroeconomic policies are unlikely to be successful if, in their enthusiasm for the supply side policies, they fail to pay adequate attention to the problem of aggregate demand and its composition in the economy. In putting forward this view, he often fought a rather lonely battle against the dominant orthodoxy in economics. Yet, he never compromised his intellectual integrity for the sake of convenience, and refused to move with the passing intellectual fashions of the day. He always argued patiently his case in the hope of engaging the other side in a serious dialogue. That dialogue would have yielded more fruitful results in the shaping of economic policies, especially in Germany, if it had got a wider hearing, and the other participants had also been as seriously engaged as him in furthering the dialogue.

It is interesting to speculate why certain economic ideas get a wider hearing than others. Pure logic seldom wins an economic argument, because policies that follow especially from macroeconomic theory, have consequences going beyond the academia. They affect the economic and political interests of various groups. Theories with uncomfortable implications for the dominant interests in the society are more easily by-passed in a sort of academic conspiracy of silence, simply by not giving them an adequate hearing. And, this becomes easier in economics; because, without being subject to the discipline of controlled experiment, all theoretical models are gross simplifications of reality. Even statistical and econometric tests hardly have the power to discriminate decisively among alternative theories. So political prejudices and economic interests thrive. They have a relatively free hand in choosing which theory should be applied for policy formulation, except perhaps in some situations of engulfing crisis.

Nevertheless, dominant interests are also the product of the historical circumstances. This paper shows how the on-going process of globalization has a nurtured in the society a growing dominant interest, and through it has exerted a powerful influence on macroeconomic policy with adverse consequences for the working population.