Supply Side Economics Special

How do you achieve the magic formula of low inflation and economic growth? In the 1970s this was beginning to move further and further away from the reach of policy makers using the traditional approach of ‘demand management’, In the post-war era fiscal and monetary policy to manage the vagaries of the economic cycle but this approach was undermined by the curse of "stagflation". The late 1970s and 1980s so the emergence of a "new" approach and policy-making saw a big swing towards the use of what became known as supply-side policies. On both sides of the Atlantic Thatcherism and Reaganomics introduced ‘trickle-down’ economics to the world and a whole suite of new policies to manage (or not manage!) the economy - but what were they trying to do and did they actually work? In this new special by Pete and Gav, your friendly neighbourhood economists, we dive into the world of supply-side economics. As always we discuss 10 questions that we hope will give you a good overview of what supply-side policies are and the key debates surrounding them. Along the way, you will come across a ‘supply’ quiz and find out which economist has actually seen one of our paintings of them! Technical support as always comes from Nic. Enjoy and afterwards, you might think about what kind of graph you might draw on a napkin that would change economics forever!