DISCRETIONARY FISCAL POLICY: Explicit changes in government purchases and/or taxes (fiscal policy) that are made with the expressed goal of stabilizing business cycles, reducing unemployment, and/or lowering inflation. While most fiscal policy studied in economics is discretionary, the contrast is with automatic stabilizers, changes in taxes and transfer payments the help stabilize business cycles without explicit government actions. Discretionary monetary policy is a similar type of policy. See also | discretionary | discretionary policy | business cycle | fiscal policy | discretionary monetary policy | monetary policy | stabilization policies | automatic stabilizers | inflation | unemployment |
