Dinner Party Economics Summary

Throughout Eveline Adomait and Richard Maranta’s Dinner Party Economics there is continuous discussion surrounding the problems that economies face around the world and the various methods that can be used to alter the state of the current economic conditions. Changes in consumer spending patterns can become a problem for the economy as a whole, potentially resulting in over-inflation or recession. Implementing discretionary policies such as monetary policy through changing interest rates, and fiscal policy through taxation and government spending, makes it possible to fix these economic problems.

Inflation occurs when consumers are spending like crazy, and “the central banks flood the system with too much money,” (DPE, 37). They do so through

But as we know, there is always going to be one or the other. The reason that an economy is thrown out of equilibrium in the first place is a result of consumer spending habits. If these habits are changed, there is a result is one of two things. If consumers increase there spending habits, an inflationary gap occurs. At the opposite end of the spectrum, if consumers were to reduce their spending, the result is a recessionary gap. Inflation occurs when the economy is growing uncontrollably fast as a result of consumer spending. This rapid rate of inflation happens when consumers are spending money due to increases in income. When consumers spend more, this increases the overall price level, which therefore leads to a further increase in income. This cycle is what leads to over-inflation. One of two things can be done when an economy is experiencing an economic gap, whether it is above or below the trend line. Option one is to do nothing about it and let the problem work itself out. The problem with this method is that in order for a recession to work itself out without government assistance, this requires that workers take pay cuts – something that a very low percentage of people are accepting of simply due to the personal

When interest rates on loans are high, this leaves people with less disposable income resulting in less consumer spending. Depending on where the economy stands, this can be good or bad, as it would lead toward recession. But that may be exactly what is intended in order to decrease spending if the economy is currently experiencing over-inflation. The government may intentionally send the market into a recession rather than potentially risking too high levels of inflation. On the other hand, if the economy were already in recession this would only make the recession worse. In the situation where the economy is currently in recession, the government is instead going to change the overnight rate in order to therefore lower interest rates on loans in order to provoke consumer