ECONOMIC AFFAIRS最新文献

US presidents have explicitly addressed trade-offs between adequate military budgets and accruing national debt. Presidents have deliberately considered reductions to defence spending as part of a plan to shrink deficits, but they have also found there is a level of defence spending beneath which they dare not fall. This study reports the results of an examination of primary source documents, speeches, and other records seeking to determine the extent to which presidential administrations considered fiscal balances when making defence spending decisions. Part One addresses the administrations of Presidents Truman through Johnson. Part Two covers Presidents Nixon through Biden. These results inform debates over the US national debt, deficit spending, and the mixtures of spending cuts and revenue increases which are practical to achieve a balanced budget.

This study reviews China's largest post-COVID economic stimulus, launched in September–October 2024, examining its background, policy contents, early effects, and broader implications. Specifically, triggered by worsening economic conditions, the package aimed to stabilise stock and real estate markets, support consumption, and ease local financial stress while continuing strategic hi-tech development. By March 2025, results were mixed – weak demand persisted, but favoured sectors showed gains. This episode illustrates China's balancing act between short-term fixes and long-term ambitions, development and security, and reflects growing state intervention in the economy. It offers insights for understanding China's evolving policy logic and navigating debates on its future trajectory, including the ‘Peak China’ discourse.

This study examines the anticipated socio-ecological and economic impacts of a mechanism to promote renewable energy development in Russia. The proposed mechanism supports the government's objective of increasing renewable energy share to 2.5 per cent of total energy production and consumption in the wholesale electricity and capacity market by 2030. A quantitative analysis of these effects within Russia's Arctic zone indicates an estimated impact valued at RUB 11.34 billion in 2030. The findings highlight the potential for renewable energy to contribute significantly to the sustainable development of regions with harsh environmental conditions, by reducing carbon emissions and diversifying energy sources. The study also underscores the importance of targeted policies and financial incentives for renewable energy development. The research provides important insights for stakeholders and policymakers aiming to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability. It also identifies specific policy recommendations for fostering a robust and sustainable renewable energy sector in Russia's Arctic Zone.

David Graeber describes the malaise of ‘bullshit jobs’ but misattributes their cause to capitalism. I offer a different account: a bullshit job is usually one that would not survive without regulation, subsidy, or legal privilege. Such roles proliferate through state-driven mechanisms: (1) regulatory inflation that converts productive effort into compliance; (2) distorted economic calculation when prices and profit-and-loss signals are muted; (3) the rise of symbolic labour; and (4) monetary interventions that pull talent into administrative and speculative niches. I distinguish perceived alienation from economic value, advance testable cross-country predictions, sketch an empirical agenda, and propose reforms (legal simplification, deregulation) to reduce meaningless work.

Behavioural economists propose the ‘aspiration-based adaptive rule’ (ABAR) model in which a trial-and-error heuristic is developed to explain voter turnout. However, several problems appear. First, the model links propensity to vote with expected pay-offs that are in turn based on the extent to which the pay-offs of previous actions of voting exceeded the agents' aspirations. But this leads to an infinite regress to previous actions of voting, which has the consequence of leaving unexplained why people bother to vote in the first place. Second, the ABAR model is tautological for even if the model derives testable statistical distributions, the theoretical premises from which these predictions are derived are inevitably confirmed. As a result, the same premises can be used to explain both voting and abstention, and capture theoretically all possibilities.