Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of boxes
- List of tables
- List of symbols, abbreviations and acronyms
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I The market, efficiency and equity
- Part II Normative and positive theory of economic policy
- Part III Microeconomic policies
- Part IV Macroeconomic policies
- Part V Public institutions in an international setting
- Part VI Globalisation and the quest for a new institutional setting
- Bibliography
- Author index
- Subject index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of boxes
- List of tables
- List of symbols, abbreviations and acronyms
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I The market, efficiency and equity
- Part II Normative and positive theory of economic policy
- Part III Microeconomic policies
- Part IV Macroeconomic policies
- Part V Public institutions in an international setting
- Part VI Globalisation and the quest for a new institutional setting
- Bibliography
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Economic policy
The reader about to embark on the study of economic policy will very probably already be familiar with the principles of economic analysis, and it is to this discipline that we will turn to introduce our subject.
Economic analysis examines the individual or aggregate decisions of private economic agents about what they produce, exchange and consume. These decisions are taken with specific objectives in mind, objectives that represent criteria for ordering the various possible situations in which agents might find themselves. For example, according to neoclassical theory consumers choose the combination of goods that maximises their utility, while entrepreneurs choose the quantity of output and the combination of inputs for each good that maximises their profit.
Economic analysis does not usually examine the behaviour of ‘public’ economic agents, which are attributed with collective aims. The choices of the latter – for example, government decisions regarding the level of expenditure or taxation – enter the macroeconomic and microeconomic models of economic analysis as simple data. At most, alternative hypotheses regarding the level of government expenditure or taxation are considered in order to acquire some indication of what changes there would be in the performance of individual economic agents or the economy as a whole.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Economic Policy in the Age of Globalisation , pp. 1 - 6Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005