Tag Archives: policy formulation

Reuters reported (July 8, 2018) that the awful Madame Lagarde was in France last week lecturing people on how the “joint euro zone budget could be designed with conditions so that it does not become a no-strings transfer of rich countries’ cash to poorer members”. Meanwhile, Jürgen Habermas was lecturing all and sundry on how a “frightened retreat behind national borders cannot be the correct response to … the politically uncontrollable functional imperatives of a global capitalism that is...

This is Part 3 (and final) of my mini-series analysing some of the challenges that the newly elected majority government in Timor-Leste faces. In Part 2, I discussed the progress of the Strategic Development Plan and the challenges ahead in terms of poverty, unemployment, and other indicators relating to the development process. In Part 2, I focused more on the currency debate – documenting how the IMF and World Bank had infused its ideological stance into the currency arrangements that...

In a previous article, I explained why I am complacent about the state of economic theory in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). This matters for someone like myself, who is attempting to write primers explaining various economic concepts. However, for many followers of MMT, the more important question is how its theoretical concepts get translated into a new policy framework. This raises the question of political economy, which I largely shy away from. However, I will offer my eccentric...

It appears to be a mistake to refer to the price level when discussing the theoretical properties of an economy; at best, there are a few price levels in play at a given time. If we are referring to the measured level of a price index, such as the Consumer Price Index (CPI) there is no difficulty, however this aggregate price index should not be expected to correspond to any useful theoretical construct. This article explains my logic, and then looks at the practical implications of what...

Policy models and their implications — not just economic.The Case for Concerted ActionAlex Izurieta On UN Global Policy ModelV. Ramanan