Why Government Succeeds and Why It Fails

by Glazer, Amihai

• ISBN13: 9780674015890
• ISBN10: 0674015894
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-02-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

This book looks beyond politics to show how the ability of the U.S. government to implement policies is strongly affected by various economic constraints. These include the credibility of the policies, the ability of government to commit to them, the extent to which firms and consumers rationally anticipate their effects, whether the success of a policy further encourages firms and individuals to behave in intended ways, and whether the behavior of such actors can be sustained without continued government intervention. The authors apply these concepts to four areas of policy: macroeconomic policies to promote employment and economic growth, redistributive policies to benefit the poor and the elderly, production policies to provide goods and services, and regulatory policies to guide the behavior of firms and individuals. In doing so they provide plausible explanations of many puzzling phenomena--for example, why government has been successful in reducing cigarette smoking, but has failed to get people to install and maintain emission-control devices in their cars. This book recasts debates about public policy, avoiding conventional "pro-government" or "anti-government" positions; rather, it helps to predict when public policy will succeed.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction: Public Policy-Limits and Possibilities	1	(19)
How Economics Interacts with Politics	3	(1)
Structure of Analysis	4	(1)
Conceptual Apparatus: Economic Constraints	5	(13)
What Makes Problems Soluble?	18	(2)
1 Macroeconomics: Can Government Control the Economy?	20	(28)
Managing the Economy: Partisan Incentives and Political Cycles	21	(4)
Monetary Policy and Rational Expectations	25	(8)
Fiscal Policy-Is It Just Crowding Out?	33	(2)
Exhortation: Persuasion and the Art of Equilibrium Selection	35	(7)
Spending, Taxes, and Expectations: Budget Deficits as Policy Instruments	42	(5)
Can Government Control the Economy?	47	(1)
2 Redistribution: A Success Story?	48	(24)
Economic Constraints and Redistribution	50	(2)
Uncertainty and Redistribution: Data	52	(5)
Government Commitment to Future Redistribution	57	(1)
Implications for Redistribution	58	(1)
Effectiveness of Redistributive Policy	59	(9)
Why Not Taxes?	68	(3)
Conclusions: Redistributive Possibilities	71	(1)
3 When Can Government Regulate?	72	(24)
The Scope of Regulation	73	(2)
Regulating Firms: Possibilities and Pitfalls	75	(14)
Regulating Consumer Behavior	89	(5)
Conditions for Regulatory Success	94	(2)
4 Producing Goods and Services: Getting the Right Mix	96	(22)
What Is Production?	98	(2)
Crowding Out Private Provision	100	(6)
Credibility as an Obstacle to Inducing Production	106	(3)
Credibility as an Obstacle to Restricting Production	109	(7)
Production Is Difficult	116	(2)
5 Economic Constraints and Political Institutions	118	(21)
Divided Government and the Politics of Gridlock	119	(6)
Federalism and the Devolution of Authority	125	(6)
Political and Policy Reform	131	(5)
What Do Politicians Know?	136	(1)
Institutional Design and Policy Effectiveness	137	(2)
6 Final Thoughts	139	(10)
What Can Government Do? Five Lessons	141	(4)
Conclusions: The Burden of Government	145	(4)
Notes	149	(26)
References	175	(22)
Index	197