Diplomas and Thatch Houses or Role of Policymakers in Business Cycle Fluctuations

Diplomas and Thatch Houses: Asserting Tradition in a Changing Micronesia

Author: Juliana Flinn

Diplomas and Thatch Houses examines the people of Pulap, a tiny atoll just north of the Equator in the western Pacific. Pulapese consider themselves and are known to their neighbors as the most traditional islanders, a situation they regard as an asset and not as a sign of backwardness. Pulapese deliberately wear their lavalavas and loincloths and practice traditional dances and rituals. Rather than being just a remnant of the past, tradition for the Pulapese is created and displayed as a means of asserting cultural identity. Like other Micronesians, the Pulapese view a person less as an isolated, independent individual and more as a link in a network of relationships. Behavior, more than biology or descent, shapes identity. The Pulapese manipulate their "traditional" identity as a political tool--as an adaptive strategy to contend with the rapid changes wrought by a foreign administration. To the Pulapese, tradition is politically valuable; they fiercely contend that their customs and patterns of behavior entitle them to prestige and power in modern Micronesia. Diplomas and Thatch Houses is an important contribution to the literature on ethnicity, nationality, and cultural identity, as well as to Micronesian/Pacific studies.

Go to: Two Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration or The Language Police

Role of Policymakers in Business Cycle Fluctuations

Author: Jim Granato

The book's central theme is that a policymaker's role is to enhance the public's ability to co-ordinate their price information, price expectations, and economic activities. This role is fulfilled when policymakers maintain inflation stability. Inflation persists less when an implicit or explicit inflation target is met. Granato and Wong argue that inflation persistence is reduced when the public substitutes the prespecified inflation target for past inflation. A by-product of this co-ordination process is greater economic stability. In particular, inflation stability contributes to greater economic output stability, including the potential for the simultaneous reduction of both inflation and output variability - inflation-output co-stabilization (IOCS). Granato and Wong use historical, formal, and applied statistical analysis of business-cycle performance in the United States for the 1960 to 2000 period. They find that during periods when policymakers emphasise inflation stability, inflation uncertainty and persistence were reduced.

Table of Contents:

Part I. The Interaction of Policy and Outcomes:

1. Coordinating price information;
2. Outcomes and policy: an illustration;
3. Policy evolution: 1960 to 2000;

Part II. The Role of Policymakers:
4. The theoretical model;
5. Policy and aggregate variability;
6. The optimal policymaker role;

Part III. Coordination Dynamics:
7. Coordinating inflation forecasts;
8. Inflation-stabilizing policy: robustness;
9. Conclusion and implications.