Economic Policy and Performance in Industrial Democracies

Takayuki Sakamoto is assistant professor of political science at Southern Methodist University (USA).

• 1. Introduction 2. Party Governments-Central Banks Interaction: The Fiscal-Monetary Policy Mix 3. Change in the Economic Environment, Political Actors and Adjustment 4. The Political-Economic Determinants of Economic Policy and Outcomes: Basic Empirical Results 5. Party Governments, Central Banks and Labor: Empirical Evidence for Interactive Effects 6. Conclusion

"This book considers the joint choice of monetary and fiscal policy by monetary and fiscal authorities, the central bank and the government, which are separate entities with differing objectives insofar as the former is independent of the latter. It considers the combination of multiple characteristics of these governments and their institutional-structural environments—left/right partisanship, fractionalization, labour-market organization and institutions, and election-year incentives—in explaining these policy choices. No previous work in political science of which I am aware gives as serious and sustained attention to this political economy of the joint fiscal/monetary choices of policymakers in as richly contextualized institutional-structural environments."Robert J. Franzese, Jr., Associate Professor of Political Science, The University of Michigan