7. Ronald Reagan and the Nuclear Freeze Movement

2021 ◽  
pp. 144-162
Author(s):  
Stephanie Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Ronald Reagan

Interpreting the Reagan Deficits

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Sargent
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Interest Rates ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Federal Budget ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Government Budget ◽  
Government Deficits ◽  
Tax Smoothing ◽  
The Government ◽  
Monetary And Fiscal Policy

This chapter examines the large net-of-interest deficits in the U.S. federal budget that have marked the administration of Ronald Reagan. It explains the fiscal and monetary actions observed during the Reagan administration as reflecting the optimal decisions of government policymakers. The discussion is based on an equation whose validity is granted by all competing theories of macroeconomics: the intertemporal government budget constraint. The chapter first considers the government budget balance and the optimal tax smoothing model of Robert Barro before analyzing monetary and fiscal policy during the Reagan years: a string of large annual net-of-interest government deficits accompanied by a monetary policy stance that has been tight, especially before February 1985, and even more so before August 1982. Indicators of tight monetary policy are high real interest rates on government debt and pretax yields that exceed the rate of economic growth.

Rational Expectations and Inflation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Sargent
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Rational Expectations ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Fiscal Policies ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Budget Deficits ◽  
Nobel Lecture ◽  
Economic Decisions ◽  
The French Revolution

This collection of essays uses the lens of rational expectations theory to examine how governments anticipate and plan for inflation, and provides insight into the pioneering research for which the author was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in economics. Rational expectations theory is based on the simple premise that people will use all the information available to them in making economic decisions, yet applying the theory to macroeconomics and econometrics is technically demanding. This book engages with practical problems in economics in a less formal, noneconometric way, demonstrating how rational expectations can satisfactorily interpret a range of historical and contemporary events. It focuses on periods of actual or threatened depreciation in the value of a nation's currency. Drawing on historical attempts to counter inflation, from the French Revolution and the aftermath of World War I to the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the book finds that there is no purely monetary cure for inflation; rather, monetary and fiscal policies must be coordinated. This fully expanded edition includes the author's 2011 Nobel lecture, “United States Then, Europe Now.” It also features new articles on the macroeconomics of the French Revolution and government budget deficits.

The Rise of Block-Granting as a Tool of Conservative Statecraft

The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-247
Author(s):  
Ryan LaRochelle
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Block Grant ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Block Grants ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Political Weapon ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThis article sheds new light on how conservatism has affected American state development by tracing the history of how block-granting transformed from a bipartisan tool to solve problems of public administration in the 1940s into a mechanism to roll back and decentralize the welfare state that had reached its zenith in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, conservative policymakers had coopted the previously bipartisan tool in their efforts to chip away at the increasingly centralized social welfare system that emerged out of the Great Society. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan successfully converted numerous categorical grants into a series of block grants, slashing funding for several social safety net programs. Block-granting allows conservative opponents of the postwar welfare state to gradually erode funding and grant more authority to state governments, thus using federalism as a more palatable political weapon to reduce social welfare spending than the full dismantlement of social programs. However, despite a flurry of successes in the early 1980s, block-granting has not proven as successful as conservatives might have hoped, and recent efforts to convert programs such as Medicaid and parts of the Affordable Care Act into block grants have failed. The failure of recent failed block grant efforts highlights the resilience of liberal reforms, even in the face of sustained conservative opposition. However, conservatives still draw upon the tool today in their efforts to erode and retrench social welfare programs. Block-granting has thus transformed from a bipartisan tool to improve bureaucratic effectiveness into a perennial weapon in conservatives’ war on the welfare state.

Destination memory in Alzheimer’s Disease: When I imagine telling Ronald Reagan about Paris

Cortex ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamad El Haj ◽  
Virginie Postal ◽  
Philippe Allain
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Destination Memory
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