Government And The Economy In Australia And New Zealand: The Politics Of Economic Policy Making
Implementing a wellbeing economy would look like a Government that delivers annual wellbeing budgets, developed a wellbeing framework, appointed a Minister for Wellbeing that sits within the Department of Premier and Cabinet who ensures a whole of Government approach to policy making, and, finally, passing a Wellbeing Economy bill to future proof wellbeing for all generations.Ultimately, we would see a state that invests in prevention, health promotion and healthy communities.
Government and the Economy in Australia and New Zealand: The Politics of Economic Policy Making
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Area 1: Size of GovernmentAs government spending, taxation, and government-controlled enterprises increase, government decision-making is substituted for individual choice and economic freedom is reduced.
The estimated results highlight that ethnic diversity; political freedom and institutional quality have their significant role to decrease the CO2 emissions while energy consumption; economic growth and financial development have positive and significant impact to deteriorate the environment. The ethnic diversity may encourage the cooperation and cohesion of people to take care of their environment. The increased awareness and knowledge embedded in ethnic fractionalization will be a source to overcome the environmental deterioration. Ethnic diversity in a country tends to be productive, innovative and creative for problem solution so it is an advantage to obtain environmental targets though social and civic cohesion. The moderate level of ethnic fractionalization has prime importance to achieve the environmental challenges. During the last two decades, specific environmental institutions and organizations are built to meet the challenges they face. The decrease in CO2 emissions with increasing GDP is explained by the greater effectiveness of institutional quality. The high quality institutions attract the foreign investors in an economy due to low volume of transactions costs that result the advancement of environment friendly technology. Producers (multinational) know the green house effect and use energy-saving technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Resultantly, consumers have a great benefit from this technological change. Due to political freedom, people are able to be part of decision making process and able to design those policies which are beneficial for their own and next generations while autocratic governments have less intention for consideration of environmental policies. The World Systems Theory (WST) has extended the debate of global economic system in context of political economy and environmental protection. The treadmill of production is a source of technological progress associated with environmental degradation also. The environmental deterioration will continuously increase with expansion of economies. The advent of new technologies will not decrease the extent of environmental deterioration but the solution rests upon political restructuring of economies towards environmental sustainability and away from the race of economic growth. Financial development is also an indirect source of economic growth and increase in economic growth is a source of rapid industrialization and energy consumption. It is responsibility of government to slow down the process of industrialization with special focus to those industries which are emitting high level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The use of environmental friendly machinery may be policy tool for industry.
The active role of government is necessary to protect the environment. Mere economic aspects are not sufficient to stop environmental deterioration but social indicators are also needed to be focused with special reference to institutional quality, political freedom and ethnic diversity. If institutional quality is better then people have trust on law enforcement authorities and any restriction to protect the environment will be accepted by the public, otherwise people will not abide by environmental laws when people have chance to escape. The political system can be structured in such a way by including the people in decision making. If people actively participate in decision making then responsibility to act upon those decisions will be endorsed massively. Besides, most of countries have ethnic fractionalization and it is a source of innovation and creativity so an atmosphere of social cohesion and being respected may have positive consequences for environmental protection. In addition, energy efficient and environmental friendly technologies may be adopted to stop environmental deterioration. It will increase productivity on the one side and will decrease the CO2 emission on the other side. All above discussion can be concluded that participation of people in decision making through political freedom in an efficient institutional environment along with ethnic fractionalization will preserve the environment for the long time. The negative impacts of economic expansion and financial development on environment may be reduced through use of green technologies, a policy direction for the policy makers.
In the same way, the social cost of carbon can help inform and improve the decisions the federal government makes. A number of other countries, including Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, have similar estimates of the social cost of carbon for use in government policy making.
The relationship between politics and financial markets is central for many, if not most, political economy arguments. The existing literature focuses on the effect of domestic and international political interests, institutions, and policy decisions on returns and volatility in stock, bond, and foreign exchange markets. This research bears implications for three major debates in political science: the distributive effects of politics, globalization and state autonomy, and the political roots of economic credibility and its tensions with democratic accountability. While the study of politics and financial markets is complicated by several theoretical and empirical challenges, recent methodological innovations in political research provide a window of opportunity for the development of the field.