Government Policies and the Delayed Economic Recovery (Hoover Institution Press Publication) (Volume 627) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0817915346 ISBN 13: 9780817915346

Publisher: Hoover Institution Press, 2012

Synopsis

This book examines the reasons for the unprecedented weak recovery following the recent US recession and explores the possibility that government economic policy is the problem. Drawing on empirical research that looks at issues from policy uncertainty to increased regulation, the volume offers a broad-based assessment of how government policies are slowing economic growth and provides a framework for understanding how those policies should change to restore prosperity in America.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

The recovery from the recession of 2007–9 has been the weakest in American history. Employment growth has been especially weak: three years after the recovery began, a smaller percentage of the working-age population was employed than when it began. The slow recovery raises fundamental economic and public policy questions: What has been the cause? What can be done to restore robust economic growth? Can a slow-growth America lead the world?

Government Policies and the Delayed Economic Recovery examines the reasons for the weak recovery from the recent US recession and explores the possibility that government economic policy is the problem. In his insightful opening chapter, George Shultz explains why diagnosing the situation and then finding a solution to the problem of slow growth is extraordinarily important. If a slow-growth America becomes the new normal for the twenty-first century, not only will the future prosperity of the United States be sacrificed but so too will American leadership worldwide. Following his analysis, the book then focuses on six empirical research studies that examine issues from policy uncertainty to increased regulation as the reasons for slow growth. Taken together, the contributors to this volume offer a broad-based assessment of how government policies are slowing economic growth: by creating uncertainty and unpredictability, engendering short-term planning horizons, and depressing the incentives for businesses to hire new workers and invest in capital and new technologies.

The book concludes with key recommendations to help restore prosperity, including a broad-based tax reform that cuts tax rates, equalizes tax treatment across all types of capital, broadens the tax base, confronts entitlement spending, and, more broadly, reduces government spending as a percentage of GDP, as well as reforming unemployment benefits to reward job acceptance and accumulating human capital. The implications are clear: the future of both the American and the world economy is riding on an excellent diagnosis of the problem and appropriate changes in policy.

About the Author:

Lee E. Ohanian is a professor of economics and director of the Ettinger Family Program in Macroeconomic Research at the University of California–Los Angeles, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. John B. Taylor is the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution and the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University. Ian J. Wright is a PhD student in the Department of Economics at Stanford University and a recipient of the Shultz Graduate Student Fellowship in Economic Policy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0817915346
• ISBN 13: 9780817915346
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 262
• Editor: Ohanian Lee E., Taylor John B., Wright Ian