The Tax Research glossary seeks to explain the terms used on this blog that refer to more technical aspects of economics, accounting and tax. It recognises that understanding these terms is critical to understanding the economic issues that affect us all the time.
Like the rest of the Tax Research blog, this glossary is written by Richard Murphy unless there is a note to the contrary. It is normative approach and reflects post-Keynesian, heterodox economic opinion with a bias towards modern monetary theory. The fact that many items in that sentence are hyperlinked shows that they are explained in the glossary.
The copyright notices pertaining to the Tax Research blog apply to this glossary.
The glossary is designed to achieve three goals:
- It seeks to provide a short, hopefully straightforward, definition of what a term might mean.
- It then seeks, when appropriate, to explain what the term means within the context in which it is used. This is meant to elaborate the definition to add to understanding.
- It then critiques the term, explaining, if appropriate, what the weaknesses inherent in the term or the situation it describes are. The aim here is to empower the reader to understand the issues behind the nonsense that most professions create around their activity to provide them with a mystique that they rarely deserve and which often hides what they are really up to.
The glossary is not complete. It will grow over time. If you think there are entries that need adding please let me know by emailing glossary@taxresearch.org.uk. Please also feel free to suggest edits. The best way to do this is to copy an entry into Word and then send me a track-changed document indicating the changes that you suggest.
Because of the way in which it is coded this glossary automatically cross refers entries within itself and to the blog that it supports and within the glossary itself but if you think a link is missing please let me know.
Finally, if you like this glossary then you might like to buy me a coffee. It has required the support of a fair few to write it. You can do so here.
Glossary Entries
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Jackson Hole
Jackson Hole central banker's meeting is an annual economic policy symposium held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the United States.
The event is organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and brings together central bankers, finance ministers, academics, and financial market participants from around the world. The meeting serves as a forum for participants to discuss and exchange views on economic and monetary policy issues.
The Jackson Hole symposium is known for its high-profile speakers and influential attendees. It typically features keynote speeches by prominent central bankers, including the Chair of the Federal Reserve, and attracts significant media attention and market scrutiny. The event has gained importance in recent years as a platform for central banks to communicate their policy intentions.
It can reasonably be argue that this event and those organised by the Bank of International Settlements are the places where central bankers form their worldview.
Job guarantee
The so-called job guarantee is a policy proposal associated with modern monetary theory (MMT) that seeks to achieve full employment by offering a publicly funded job at a fixed wage to anyone willing and able to work. It is presented as a mechanism to anchor prices, eliminate involuntary unemployment, and provide a buffer stock of employed rather than unemployed labour.
Although well-intentioned, the job guarantee raises significant practical and conceptual problems.
Its key features and limitations are as follows.
First, the job guarantee replaces unemployment with state-managed employment. The implicit assumption in the job guarantee is that the state can create and administer a standing pool of jobs available on demand. In practice, this requires continuous identification, design, and potential supervision of meaningful, additional, and non-displacing work that may not, nonetheless, be undertaken. That is an administrative challenge of considerable scale and complexity.
Second, it assumes a uniform labour buffer can stabilise inflation because the job guarantee is intended to act as a price anchor by fixing a wage for the buffer stock of labour that would otherwise be unemployed. This assumes that a diverse labour force with varying skills, locations and needs can be treated as a homogeneous stabilising mechanism. Real labour markets are far more complex, and inflation is usually driven by factors other than wages.
Third, the job guarantee risks creating a secondary labour market, as the labour it supplies could become a parallel system of lower-paid, less secure, or lower-status work, distinct from mainstream employment. Instead of eliminating labour market inequality, it may institutionalise it, with participants stigmatised or trapped in transitional roles.
Fourth, the job guarantee diverts attention from the proper role of fiscal policy. Full employment can be better achieved through targeted public investment, industrial strategy and support for demand across the whole economy. The job guarantee reframes the issue as one of residual labour absorption rather than of systemic economic system design, which is what is really required.
Fifth, it misunderstands the nature of unemployment, which is not simply the absence of jobs that can be filled on demand. Unemployment reflects structural issues such as regional imbalance, skills mismatch, inadequate investment, and failures in both public and private sector demand. A universal job offer does not resolve these underlying issues, which should be the focus of energy.
From a Funding the Future perspective, the objective of full employment is essential, but the job guarantee is not the most effective means of achieving it. It risks bureaucratic complexity, labour segmentation and misplaced policy focus.
A better approach is to use fiscal policy directly to sustain high levels of employment by investing in public services, infrastructure, the green transition, and care. This creates real, socially valuable jobs where they are needed, rather than relying on a standing buffer system to absorb those excluded by wider economic failure.
Full employment should be the result of a well-managed economy, not the by-product of a permanent employment scheme designed to offset its shortcomings.
Jurisdiction
The term jurisdiction usually refers to a nation state but can also refer to a self-governing region that is not fully independent e.g. the UK's Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories and some French and Dutch protectorates.
A jurisdiction has a national government i.e. it is the highest tax setting authority within its domain.
Compare with sub-national governments.
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