Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy (Hobart Papers)

Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy (Hobart Papers), 9780255364027 (0255364024), Coronet Books Inc, 1997

One of main features of the 'counter-revolution' in economics which has resulted in the revival of classical liberal ideas has been a change in views about government's ability to control the economy. 'Fiscal fine tuning' is virtually discredited and monetary policy is no longer seen as a means of stimulating employment. Not just theory, but experience in many countries demonstrates that unemployment cannot for long be held below its 'natural' rate by monetary expansion. The proper role of monetary -authorities is now generally regarded as keeping the general price level under control.

As economists' views have changed and attention has switched from employment-promotion to price stability, so inflation has been checked in many countries to the extent that zero inflation now appears an achievable goal. But is a stable price level the ideal? That is the fundamental question which

Professor George Selgin asks in Hobart Paper 132. Professor Selgin argues instead for a monetary policy which would allow prices to vary with movements in productivity (either labour or total factor productivity). Rather than attempting to keep the general price level constant, a 'productivity norm' policy would permit that level to change to reflect variations in unit costs of production. The consequence, as Selgin points out, would in recent times have been year-onyear price declines rather than the inflation which has been experienced. In the 30 years after the Second World War, for example, United States consumer prices would have halved instead of almost tripling.

Comments

Amazing Books

Web Scraping with Python (Community Experience Distilled)

Packt Publishing, 2015

Successfully scrape data from any website with the power of Python

About This Book

A hands-on guide to web scraping with real-life problems and solutions

Techniques to download and extract data from complex websites

Create a number of different web scrapers to extract...

Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization

New Riders Publishing, 2003

Don't make me wait!

That's the message web users give us in survey after survey. Even high-bandwidth users find web sites too slow. And with millions of sites to choose from, they simply won't wait for slow sites.

The problem? Bloated web pages. True, server load and network bottlenecks can hurt, but page size and complexity...

Elements of Distributed Algorithms: Modeling and Analysis with Petri Nets

Springer, 2001

Distributed Computing is rapidly becoming the principal computing paradigm in diverse areas of computing, communication, and control. Processor clusters, local and wide area networks, and the information highway evolved a new kind of problems which can be solved with distributed algorithms. In this textbook a variety of distributed algorithms...

Responsible Leadership

Springer, 2012

These chapters on ‘Responsible Leadership’ represent the latest thinking on a topic of increasing relevance in a connected world. There are many challenges that still remain when it comes to establishing responsible leadership both in theory and practice. Whilst offering conceptualisations for the improvement of leadership is...

Business Intelligence Cookbook: A Project Lifecycle Approach Using Oracle Technology

Packt Publishing, 2012

Business intelligence and data warehousing projects can be challenging and complex. Dealing with new technologies, processes, and different stakeholders presents an array of potential problems. To aid the project manager, there are recipes about project definition, scope, control, and risk management. Requirements, design, data analysis,...

Introducing Philosophy of Religion

Routledge, 2009

Does God exist? What about evil and suffering? How does faith relate to science? Is there life after death? These questions fascinate everyone and lie at the heart of philosophy of religion. Chad Meister offers an up-to-date introduction to the field, focussing not only on traditional debates but also on contemporary concepts such as the...