Why is fiscal policy so difficult?

With the onset of an economic crisis that has been universally acknowledged since the end of March, two main questions arise: To what extent is the corona pandemic the starting point (or even the cause) of this crisis? And secondly: can the aid programmes that have been adopted prevent a deep and prolonged recession?

In dieser Folge gibt Ulrike Herrmann, Wirtschaftsjournalistin und Publizistin (taz) einen Impulsvortrag mit Fokus auf die aktuell beschlossenen Maßnahmen, Haushaltsentwicklung und Staatsverschuldung in Zeiten der Krise.

The mandate of central banks has seemed clear for decades : keep inflation low. Nevertheless borders between monetary, financial and economic policy have been blurry even before the pandemic.. Faced with the challenges of the climate crisis, slow growth, unemployment and inequality, does the financial and monetary system need a new constitutional purpose.

One method of economic modelling that has become increasingly popular in academia, government and the private sector is Agent Based Models, or ABM. These simulate the actions and interactions of thousands or even millions of people to try to understand the economy – for this reason ABM was once described to me as being “like Sim City without the graphics”. One advantage of ABM is that it is flexible, since you can choose how many agents there are (an agent just means some kind of 'economic decision maker' like a firm, consumer, worker or government); how they behave (do they use complicated or simple rules to make decisions?); as well as the environment they act in, then just run the simulation and see what happens as they interact over time.

Immer wieder sind in den letzten Jahren die Folgen einseitiger Lobby- und Marktmacht deutlich geworden – und wie schwierig es ist, sie zu begrenzen.