Selected Essays On Economic Policy

✍ Scribed by G. C. Harcourt

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 371
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This volume contains classic essays on economic policy written by one of its great exponents. The opening essay traces the author's evolving structures of thought about economics and the policy proposals that came from them over this period. Section 2 contains essays that set the background to the policy recommendations. In section 3 the role of investment incentives is analyzed. Section 4 is concerned with the influence of accounting conventions on private decision-making and government policy in both capitalist and planned economies. Section 5 contains a number of package deals, all designed to fit within the constraint of the philosophy of governments in power. The last section, general essays, ranges from a scheme for the payment of prisoners to the celebration of the views on policy of great economists, from Colin Clark, through Nicky Kaldor to John Cornwall.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 6
Foreword......Page 8
Preface......Page 11
Acknowledgements......Page 15
Part I. Introduction......Page 18
1. ‘The End of a Perfect Day’: ‘Horses for Courses’ and Policy Proposals......Page 20
Part II. Background to Policy Recommendations......Page 38
2. Theoretical Controversy and Social Significance: An Evaluation of the Cambridge Controversies......Page 40
3. Eric Russell, 1921-77: A Great Australian Political Economist......Page 65
4. On Theories and Policies......Page 83
5. The Mixed Economy......Page 98
Part III. Taxation Reform and Investment Incentives......Page 114
6. Investment Allowances for Primary Producers......Page 116
7. Taxation and Business Surplus......Page 125
8. IInvestment and Initial Allowances as Fiscal Devices......Page 130
9. Investment-Decision Criteria, Investment Incentives and the Choice of Technique......Page 137
Part IV. Accounting Conventions and Policy......Page 162
10. The Quantitative Effect of Basing Company Taxation on Replacement Costs......Page 164
11. Incomes Policy and the Measurement of Profits......Page 184
12. The Measurement of the Rate of Profit and the Bonus Scheme for Managers in the Soviet Union......Page 190
Part V. Package Deals......Page 198
13. The Social Consequences of Inflation......Page 200
14. Policy and Responses for Australia......Page 217
15. Making Socialism in Your Own Country......Page 228
16. Markets, Madness and a Middle Way......Page 249
17. Macroeconomic Policy for Australia in the 1990s......Page 264
18. A ‘Modest Proposal’ for Taming Speculators and Putting the World on Course to Prosperity......Page 272
19. Pay Policy, Accumulation and Productivity......Page 280
Part VI. General Essays......Page 294
20. The Payment of Prisoners......Page 296
21. Notes on the Social Limits to Growth......Page 301
22. University Ideals and the Market......Page 310
23. Economic Theory and Economic Policy: Two Views......Page 325
24. The Vital Contributions of John Cornwall to Economic Theory and Policy: A Tribute from Two Admiring Friends on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday......Page 348
Index......Page 364