ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the economic objectives that state activity in the economy pursues. The ultimate objectives focus on ensuring that the economy grows in a stable and sustainable way (and, as a consequence, that employment is available to all) and that wealth is distributed in a certain way. However, some goals don’t fit either of these categories; broadly speaking, they can be understood as defending social values. The problem with ultimate objectives is that they are not directly measurable, and therefore, they have to be represented by variables such as the gross domestic product (GDP), the unemployment rate or the Gini coefficient. Other macroeconomic variables are subject to public control, which can be used to measure the stability and solidity of growth: inflation, public deficit and the balance of trade. However, changes in these indicators do not guide the majority of public actions, which simply have more-defined and more-immediate objectives whose achievement allows for progress towards larger goals. An additional question is whether the control variables selected are the most appropriate to guide public activity in the economy.
