FURTHER EVIDENCE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DEBT AND INFLATION

Does an increase in the federal debt cause inflation? Dwyer [1982] using a par value measure of debt, finds no support for such a causal link. Cox [1985] using a market value measure, finds evidence that increases in debt produce higher inflation rates. We reconcile these results by demonstrating that failure to capture the interest rate effects inherent in the market value measure accounts for the finding that debt "causes" inflation. Incorporating interest rates into our test equations using the market value series leads us to conclude that, like the par value series results, increases in federal debt do not cause higher rates of inflation.     

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF INTEREST RATE BEHAVIOR: ARE CENTRAL BANKS DIFFERENT?

Political influences on short-term interest rates in seventeen OECD countries from 1960–1990 are measured. After controlling for unexpected changes in inflation and unemployment, as well as changes in the world interest rate, short-term interest rates in most countries do not respond to political events, neither the timing of elections nor changes in the governing party. Thus, on this criterion, the central banks in this sample do not reveal large differences in their degree of independence from political influence. The small differences are not closely related to rankings of central bank independence based on quantification of central bank laws.     

BASHING AND COERCION IN MONETARY POLICY

Political pressure, or "bashing," by the administration is typically believed to be one way that the administration can coerce an otherwise independent central bank into following the administration's preferred monetary policy path. This paper develops a model for analyzing this type of policy "cooperation" and demonstrates that bashing the central bank creates uncertainty on the part of private agents with regard to future policy actions, which translates into real wage and output variability. Hence, although beneficial to the administration, political pressure creates uncertainty and thus economic instability.     

INFLATION AND GOVERNMENT DEFICITS

There is a pronounced positive correlation of inflation and government deficits in the United States since World War II. The purpose of this paper is to test the three leading explanations of this correlation. These three explanations are: (a) a deficit increases prices through a wealth effect; (b) a deficit results in the Federal Reserve purchasing debt, thus increasing the money supply and prices; and (c) expected inflation increases the deficit (which is the change in the nominal value of bonds). No support is found for either of the first two hypotheses. The results indicate that expected government deficits have no significance for future inflation.     

Breaking the taboo: a history of monetary financing in Canada, 1930–1975

Monetary financing – the funding of state expenditure via the creation of new money rather than through taxation or borrowing – has become a taboo policy instrument in advanced economies. It is generally associated with dangerously high inflation and/or war. Relatedly, a key institutional feature of modern independent central banks is that they are not obligated to support government expenditure via money creation. Since the financial crisis of 2007–2008, however, unorthodox monetary policies, in particular quantitative easing, coupled with stagnant growth and high levels of public and private debt have led to questions over the monetary financing taboo. Debates on the topic have so far been mainly theoretical with little attention to the social and political dynamics of historical instances of monetary financing. This paper analyses one of the most significant twentieth‐century cases: Canada from the period after the Great Depression up until the monetarist revolution of the 1970s. The period was a successful one for the Canadian economy, with high growth and employment and manageable inflation. It offers some interesting insights into the relationship between states and central banks and present‐day discussions around the governance of money creation.     

Unequal at the starting line: Creating participatory inequalities across generations and among groups

We investigate how inequalities in political participation are shaped across generations by considering the influence of family background-in particular, parents' education and political involvement-on political participation. We pursue this issue, first, for individuals, investigating the effects of parental characteristics on the participatory profile of their offspring. Then, we use what we have learned to understand how group differences in political participation-between women and men and among Latinos, African Americans, and Anglo Whites-are rooted in the legacy of class and political background and in experiences throughout the life cycle. They are co-authors of The Private Roots of Public Action: Gender, Equality, and Political Participation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001) which was the co-writer of the Victoria Schuck Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book on gender and politics of its year.     

Central bank independence, economic freedom, and inflation rates

Measures of central bank independence combine many attributes that may or may not affect inflation. Central bank attributes are chosen as a result of political calculations over the distribution of resources between competing interest groups. Simultaneity bias results from regressions of central bank independence or of economic and political freedom on inflation or growth. Our estimates demonstrate the connections between economic and political freedom and central bank attributes that lead to inflation. Countries showing high degrees of economic freedom adopt structures that lead to lower inflation; those that show high degrees of political freedom do not adopt inflation-reducing institutional structures.     

A POSITIVE THEORY OF INFLATION AND INFLATION VARIANCE

Empirically, inflation and the variance of inflation are positively associated. This paper develops a model that provides a potential explanation for this relationship in tern of the incentives facing the policymaker in a "discretionary equilibrium." The model can also account for an empirical association between inflation and measures of real output instability. There is, however, no direct causal link whatever from the average rate of inflation to either the variance of inflation or that of real output.     

Activism,Mobilisation and Political Engagement: Comparative Historical Perspectives

This editorial introduction discusses and explains the broader research context underpinning the essays, namely the Leverhulme Trust-funded Research Network, “The Comparative History of Political Engagement in Western and African Societies”. It provides a brief overview of the intellectual background to the network's agenda, and, in particular, argues that comparative sociological approaches to the study of political engagement have left it inadequately historicized. The introduction then discusses the general theme of “Activism, mobilization and Political Engagement”, which all contributors to the international conference were asked to consider. It argues that these essays, when taken together, offer new comparative historical perspectives for investigations into the history of political engagement, providing highly suggestive points of departures for future research.     

Immigration Policies and the Factors of Migration from Developing Countries to South Korea: An Empirical Analysis

This study examines the impacts of immigration policies adopted by the Korean government, vis‐a‐vis other economic, social, demographic, and political factors, on labour migration from developing countries to South Korea using a modified gravity model. The model is extended to marriage‐related migrants to gain insights on marriage migration. The positive results in three out of the five immigration policies examined affirm that liberal policies are associated with increased migration, especially for preferred groups like ethnic Koreans, marriage migrants, and professionals. The positive effects of “push” factors such as population, unemployment, and inflation are generally similar to their effects on migration to the US, Canada, Germany, and the UK despite its more rapid transition from a migrant‐sending into a migrant‐receiving country. Political terror's non‐significance may be due to South Korea's limited asylum policy. Finally, the results of the extended model imply that marriage migration share plenty of similarities with labour migration.     

Ideology and Education for Social Work Practice

Three approaches to social work practice (Personal Deficiency, Ecological, and Political Economy) which emerge from different ideological positions (conservative, liberal and socialistlfeminist, respectively) are summarized. Utilizing a case example demonstrates how the assumptions inherent in each approach result in different problem detinitions and practice interventions. Only one of these approaches (Political Economy) supports methods of intervention which foster social transformation. Guidelines and implications for social work practice and social work education adhering to a political economy approach are discussed. Substantively different practice methods and educational models are required if sociar transformation is to be supported.     

Rational voters in a partisanship model

This paper examines a voter model for the US which is interconnected with the partisan theory. In our model, voters are rational and forward-looking. They are perfectly informed about the preferences of political parties and about the state of the economy. The predictions of our voter model differ from the predictions of conventional voter models, according to which the incumbent benefits from low unemployment and low inflation, irrespective of its political colour. In a partisan setting, the democratic party benefits from high unemployment and the republican party benefits from high inflation. Regressions of presidential approval rates indicate that the predictions of both the partisan voter model and the conventional model are consistent with the data.     

ESTIMATING THE FISHER EFFECT AND THE STOCHASTIC MONEY GROWTH PROCESS

This paper demonstrates that a change in the stochastic process generating money can alter the relationships between money and inflation and between inflation and interest rates. The extent to which inflation is forecastable is shown to depend significantly on the extent to which money is forecastable. Thus, the greater the persistence and forecastability of money, the greater the likelihood of observing a statistically significant Fisher effect.
US. data over the 1953–86 period are used to demonstrate that instability in the Fisher effect coincides with changes in the stochastic process generating money. There is a significantly stronger Fisher effect during a subsample in which money—and hence inflation—are more predictable.     

MONEY DEMAND DURING HYPERINFLATION AND STABILIZATION: BOLIVIA, 1980–1988

This paper examines the demand for money in Bolivia during the 1980s, a decade of extreme instability with annual inflation rates reaching over 20,000 percent, and a subsequent stabilization, with annual rates falling to less than 25 percent and remaining so for more than five years.
Our empirical analysis makes use of error-correction approaches, time-varying-parameter estimation with Kalman filtering, and GARCH models of expected inflation and inflation variance. We find that expected inflation and inflation uncertainty both matter for money demand. Time-varying estimates show that the reaction to monetary disequilibria was significantly faster during hyperinflation.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF THE PUBLIC DEBT IN THE UNITED STATES, 1953–1978

Barro claims that since the public rationally forecasts and discounts future taxes, government debt does not represent net wealth to the public and therefore does not affect any real economic variables. Then why are there ever deficits? Barro has presented a theory of optimal deficits based on intertemporal tax smoothing. The theory predicts that nominal debt grows in proportion to anticipated inflation, varies contracyclically with respect to real income cycles, and varies procyclically with respect to war cycles. Barro tested his theory using annual American data for 1922-76 and found weak support for his theory. This paper reexamines Barro's tests, using quarterly American data for 1953:Q1 to 1978:Q4 and finds stronger support for Barro's theory than Barro found using annual data. This paper also concludes that state and local governments do not engage in tax-smoothing behavior–––probably due to considerations of migration–––and that the debt held by the central bank should be included in the definition of public debt.     

Graduate Education for Social Change

ABSTRACT

Is it possible to conduct an effective, progressive, and politicized program for graduate students in our contemporary conservative context? This article evaluates the outcomes over seven years of a pioneering program in Political Social Work. Based on survey data of Political Social Work alumni, it addresses four outcome measures: enrollment, satisfaction with curriculum and field opportunities, job and career development, and persistence of political ideology and practice. While being “political” during the past decade is clearly different than it was in the 1960s, the evidence proposes that political content and practice can have a significant place in both social work education and the field. More specifically, the study demonstrates that politicized social workers in the 1990s were able after graduation to secure employment, sustain progressive values, and practice political social work.     

中国城市化与金融

推进城市化是中国经济可持续发展的希望所在,但是,地方政府负债投资的形式是否为最佳方式?这种方式是否能持续?从更深层次观察,地方政府负债是财政问题,这势必涉及财税体制安排、中央与地方事权分割等基础性的政治与经济制度的安排。显然,这是中国走向现代化、建立现代化国家治理结构中不可回避的重大课题。     

Political Inequality is International,Interdisciplinary, and Intersectional

Political inequality refers to the unequal influence over decisions made by political bodies and the unequal outcomes of those decisions. Political inequality is a subtype of power inequality, visible within the political processes of all kinds of political structures. In modern democracies, political inequality is simultaneously a dimension of democracy and a dimension of stratification. Two key theoretical and empirical questions are How much political inequality is there? and is political inequality rising, falling, or staying the same? The answer to these key questions requires us to specify the kind of political inequality – voice, response, and their subtypes – and whether we mean equality of political opportunities or of political outcomes. I argue that we need to understand better the form, duration, and magnitude of political inequality within and across nations. We need to study it systematically, continuously, and diligently, and in an inclusive, open‐minded way, inclining our ears to the varied contributions of the many academic disciplines. We should begin by studying political inequality as an international phenomenon and as an interdisciplinary enterprise, and from an intersectional approach.     

Commercial speech,protected speech,and political public relations

Political public relations play an unique role in American democracy because it occupies a dual role of providing both political and commercial speech. However, using analysis of the First amendment, public relations have increasingly been identified as commercial speech which receives limited protection under the U.S. Constitution. This study traces the evolution of the legal framework in which political PR has become associated with commercial speech, and how this association has made Constitutional analysis of political PR more complex. Implications for public relations practitioners and PR's role in democracy are discussed.     

What are the likely interactions among innovation,government debt,and employment?

The study here analyzes the interactions among labor, R&D intensity, and public expenditure on education (indicators of innovation), considering public debt of countries. The study is based on 27 European countries over the 1995–2009 and applies multiple regression analysis. Main findings seem to be: a significant interaction of public expenditure on education and R&D intensity with employment rate, whereas an increase of general government consolidated gross debt has a negative interaction for employment rate as well as for technology indicators. The theoretical framework and empirical evidence suggest vital political economy implications to support employment rate during contractions of the business cycle. In particular, considering the specificity of the economic structure of countries, a fruitful lung-run political economy of growth should slowly dry out public debt by supporting GDP growth, rather than reducing government debt with high taxation and balanced-budget rules, in order to decrease frictional effects for patterns of economic, technological, and employment growth.