Contents -- Introduction: A Framework for the Analysis of Macroeconomics and Electoral Politics -- Macroeconomic and Institutional Background -- The Demand for Economic Outcomes -- The Supply of Economic Outcomes -- I Macroeconomic and Institutional Background -- 1 Postwar American Macroeconomic Performance in Historical Perspective -- Growth and Unemployment -- Inflation -- The Bias toward Inflation -- Monetary Policy, the Financial System, and Economic Stabilization -- Fiscal Policy and Economic Stabilization -- The Security-Inflation Trade-Off -- 2 The Costs of Unemployment -- Defining, Interpreting, and Measuring Unemployment -- The Aggregate Costs of Unemployment -- The Incidence of Unemployment -- The Costs of Unemployment to Individuals -- 3 The Costs of Inflation -- Defining and Measuring Inflation -- Recent Trends and Fluctuations in the Underlying Inflation Rate -- Inflation and the Distribution of Personal Income -- Inflation and Personal Income Growth Rates -- Inflation and Corporate Profitability -- Saving, Investment, and Inflation -- Inflation's True Costs -- II The Demand for Economic Outcomes -- 4 Public Concern about Inflation and Unemployment -- The Salience of the Economy as a Public Issue -- The Distribution of Concern about Inflation and Unemployment in the General Electorate -- The Distribution of Concern about Inflation and Unemployment among Income, Occupational, and Partisan Groups -- 5 Macroeconomic Performance and Mass Political Support for the President -- The Political Support Model -- Empirical Results -- A Concluding Word on the Economy and Political Support for Presidents -- 6 Economic Performance and the 1980 and 1984 Elections -- Landslide Elections in Recent History -- Election Cycle Economics in 1980 and 1984 -- Rule-of-Thumb Statistical Models for Presidential Voting Outcomes -- Evidence from the Surveys.

Implications for the Future of Conservative Republicanism -- III The Supply of Economic Outcomes -- 7 Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policies and Outcomes -- The Party Cleavage Model -- Unemployment and Real Output under the Parties -- Empirical Results for the Models -- Distributional Outcomes under the Parties -- Macroeconomic Policies -- 8 Political Business Cycles -- The Theory of Election Cycles -- Empirical Analysis of Election Cycles -- Election Cycles and Partisan Cycles -- Politics and the Economy -- 9 Macroeconomic and Distributional Outcomes during Reagan's First Four Years -- Macroeconomic Goals, Policies, and Outcomes under Reagan -- Distributional Politics and Partisan Cleavages in Congress -- Distributional Consequences of the Reagan Fiscal Program -- The Legacy of Reaganomics to the American Political Economy -- Notes -- Index.