Unit 2: Supply side policies

From the defunct economics student blog comes this useful summary

Supply-side policy measures to increase aggregate supply include:
-Improve incentives for economic activity
-Reducing income tax encourages the unemployed to join the labour force and existing workers to undertake overtime and accept responsibility.
-Reducing benefit levels and tightening eligibility rules encourages/forces the unemployed to take paid work. In short overcome the unemployment trap.
-Improve incentives for entrepreneurs. Profit is the reward for risk taking; lowering corporation tax increase the reward from enterprise
-Encouraging small business start-up e.g. through tax breaks e.g. low corporation and capital gains tax
-Improve productivity
-Subsidise education & training.
-Improvements in the quantity and quality of capital. R&D innovation and new capital raises productivity. Recent UK budgets have featured tax breaks for R&D and investment to encourage firms to expand
-Encourage competition through:
Privatisation e.g. telecommunications, electricity, water, steel, gas, rail breaks up state monopolies and introduces competition. Or does privatisation replace a public with a private monopoly?
-Deregulation i.e. removing barriers to entry and opening up markets to greater competition.
Encouraging international trade as trade creates competition. Firms seek to become world class and adopt best international practice in their own organisation leading to lower unit costs
-Improve flexibility of labour markets through trade union reform