Whither Are We Bound? New Insights on American Economic Policymaking

Abstract

This article reviews recent scholarship in American economic policymaking. It focuses on scholarly work from 2012 to 2015 and considers three main streams of research. The first concerns how, amidst the lingering effects of the Great Recession, monetary and fiscal policy variables interplay to affect policy outcomes such as employment and income. The second stream relates to the politics of regulation and spans several aspects of regulatory governance such as enforcement and compliance, regulatory arbitrage in financial markets, and the role of U.S. regulatory regime structures as standards of best practice in global contexts. The third stream of research focuses on the dynamics of institutional relationships in the policy process and explores how policy narratives influence policy outcomes, how the media engages and alters political attention, and how interest groups and lobbyists shape policy decisions. The final section provides directions for future research and assesses the extent to which these frontier issues in economic research could shape American economic policymaking going forward.