As in many scientific classifications, you should have noticed that the list of macroeconomic policies available varies slightly across different economists. Everyone agrees upon fiscal and monetary policy. However, there are mixed opinions on the other policies.

Let's consider some of the alternatives included.

1. Price and wages (or income) policy

These policies are usually meant to directly control inflation from spiralling wages and prices in the economy. However, it is not achieved by the indirect methods of changing the pace of the macroeconomy via interest rates (monetary policy) or government taxation and spending (fiscal policy).

Rather it is institutional or legal in nature and involves government actions leading to the voluntary or compulsory moderation of price and wage increases by firms and trade unions by centralised collective agreement or statutory rules. It can involve periods of price and wage "freezing", guideposts or permitted percentage indexation for ages and prices, or formulas for linking wage or price increases to cost and productivity changes.

In Australia during the 1980s, the Accord was a major (price and wage) macroeconomic policy. It established an institutional basis for the firm - labour income "battle". It set the scene for the more decentralised negotiation based on productivity claims, at an enterprise level, in "enterprise bargaining" in the 1990s.

2. Overseas or international policy

This is a difficult one as many of the features of overseas policy are just monetary and fiscal policies with effects that operate across national boundaries. The major aspects of overseas policy generally include:

• exchange rates (the value of the Australian dollar in relation to other currencies)
• tariffs (taxes on imports)
• flows of overseas capital in and out of Australia (in shares, bonds, lending)

One could argue that exchange rates are an extension of monetary policy because interest rates are used as a major influence (they don't have much!) on the value of the Australian dollar by the Australian government or the Reserve Bank. However, there are other non-monetary policy ways of attempting to do this. International capital flows are also affected by interest rates. Similarly, tariffs can be seen as a form of tax and therefore part of fiscal policy

Despite this overlap, it is probably valid to see overseas policy as a separate form of macroeconomic policy because it is not made up neatly of single monetary or fiscal policies and it is distinctly focused upon economic transactions across Australia's boundaries.

3. Structural policies

Structural policies usually involve efforts at changing technology, capital investment and equipment use, labour relations, industry costs and links with other sectors, governments and universities within specific sectors. The major goal is generally to improve competitiveness and profitability. However, overall industrial restructuring policies can aim at changing the overall composition of productive activity in an economy - expanding some sectors and progressively phasing out others, less promising areas (for example, shipbuilding or the car industry in Australia).

However, while these policies are undoubtedly critical for beneficial economic (and environmental) change they are only generally linked to macroeconomic targets - usually trade balance issues. Indeed, industrial restructuring is more closely related to "mesoeconomics" than macroeconomics and it is debatable whether it is really a valid form of macroeconomic policy.

When "structural" policies are seen to include the underlying mechanisms behind production (like skills formation, transport costs, monopoly power, government regulation effects, and so forth), they are more closely related to microeconomics (note the popular push toward "microeconomic reform" in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s).

4. Other institutional controls

There are many other actions governments can take that will, at least indirectly, affect the macroeconomy. For example, legislative controls and regulations can have a direct impact on phenomena such as levels of foreign ownership in real estate or industry, monopoly ownership and control in various industries (e.g. the media), and trade flows for certain goods and services.

As with structural policies, many of these approaches are too diverse to be specifically seen as "macroeconomic" policy.