ABSTRACT
Comprising Wage-Fixing (first published 1982), and Demand Management (first published 1983) this two volume reissued set is a vital and stimulating analysis of the causes and consequences of stagflation – a paralysing combination of mass unemployment and rapid inflation which affected a variety of economies across the developed world in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Wage-Fixing, written by James Meade, deals primarily with the needed reform of wage-fixing institutions, contrasting the Great Depression of the 1930s with the Great Stagflation of the 1970s. Meanwhile Demand Management is devoted to the design of fiscal, monetary and foreign exchange-rate policies for the control of the money demand for the products of labour. This volume deals with the theory of demand management, feedback control and the creation of a dynamic model of the UK economy.
Written in clear and accessible language, this reissue will appeal to the general reader as well as students of economics and professional economists. It should be required reading for all those who wish to learn the lessons of the Great Stagflation of the 1970s to avoid a repetition in the current economic climate.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |2 pages
Part One The Policy in Theory and Practice
chapter I|1 pages
Introduction
chapter II|1 pages
The Case for
chapter |2 pages
of New Keynesianism is the suggestion that
chapter 3|6 pages
The Effect of the Oil Crisis
chapter 6|4 pages
Conclusions
chapter IV|2 pages
Three Financial Weapons: Fiscal, Monetary and Foreign-Exchange Measures
chapter |2 pages
already considered the effect of a changing rate of foreign
chapter V|2 pages
The Marriage of Weapons and Targets
chapter |2 pages
of trade will
chapter |4 pages
on the balances of trade, the foreign investment
chapter |1 pages
of the UK economy.
chapter VI|1 pages
Discretionary Interventions
part |2 pages
Part Two Rerunning History
chapter VII|1 pages
CHAPTER VII
chapter VIII|4 pages
Results of the Rerun
chapter |6 pages
the last years of the 1970s onwards without there being any very marked difference between the performance of the two Control Runs. The unemployment percentage remains somewhat above the target level of 3.76 per cent after 1977 in both cases. This is to be expected for the following reason. In so far as the Money GDP excluding North Sea oil is successfully kept on its target growth path of 13 per cent per annum and far as the proportion of the national income going to wages remains
chapter |4 pages
after 1974. From 1972 to 1974 the Control Run values of the rate of money earnings are slightly above the steady 13 per cent per annum growth because unemployment is below 3.76 per cent, as shown in Figure VIII.2. But from 1976 they are continuously falling (that is to say, the rate of money earnings is continually growing at something less than per cent per annum). This is a representation of the phenomenon that
chapter |4 pages
per cent between the two dates. This put a strain on real resources equal to 7.8 per cent of the 1972Ql GDP. two respects both the Base Run and the Control Run are assumed to
part |2 pages
Part Three Some Administrative Problems of Fiscal Control
chapter IX|1 pages
The Use of Indirect Taxes a Regulator
chapter |6 pages
of a tax change depends also upon the
chapter X|2 pages
The Use of Income Tax
chapter XI|9 pages
The Use of a Wages Tax as a Regulator
part |2 pages
Part Four The Derivation of Control Rules for Economic Policy