ABSTRACT
Despite official disavowals of an intention to impose mandatory price and wage controls, the possibility of such controls hangs over the Amer ican economy. This is partly because such controls were adopted in 1971 despite similar disavowals. This paper considers how the country reached the point at which mandatory controls were imposed, even though almost all responsible public leaders, in and out of government, had been saying for years that they didn't want them. It also examines the proposition that the generally recognized failure of the 1971-1974 controls is not evidence of the basic ineffectiveness of such a policy, but was due to special factors, notably the Nixon administration's dis taste for such measures.
