MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICY IN THEORIES OF MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS

One of the most important fields of macroeconomic research is economic policy. Economic theory offers policymakers advice, suggestions, and frameworks for projecting and realizing economic policy. Economists, however, disagree substantially over many questions concerning this issue. The opinions vary as to the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy and their role in economic stability. The aim of this paper is to present different views on monetary and fiscal policy in different schools of economic thought. Only the mainstream schools were considered, such as Keynesians, Monetarists, New Classical School, economists of the Real Business Cycle and New Keynesians. It is worth noticing that in spite of some differences there are also many similarities between them. We believe that a consensus in the field of economic policy has emerged. It encompasses monetary neutrality in the long run, monetary nature of inflation, increased monetary policy in the recent years and doubts about fiscal policy effectiveness as a tool of stabilisation. Moreover, it seems probable that macroeconomics is moving toward a New Neoclassical Synthesis, which melds New Keynesians and the Real Business Cycle theories