Causes of Contemporary Stagnation: Proceedings of an International Symposium Held at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria, October 10-12, 1984 (Studies in Contemporary Economics)

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: It might have been. BRONFENBRENNER On taxation: The U.S. should have recognized much earlier than it did that progressive direct taxation had been overdone and European-style welfare-state systems over-extended. We should have forestalled the drain of resources into the underground economy and the brain-drain into the tax-avoidance industry. We should have moved forthrightly BRONFENBRENNER world economy. It would also have assisted the representative U.S. citizen in his capacity as a consumer, however difficult it might have been to convince him of the point. We must of course avoid claiming too much. Some individuals' and corporate bodies' losses, as members or affiliates of economic pressure groups on the production side~ would surely have exceeded their gains as consumers. The tariff, meaning trade restrictions more generally, is not only "the mother of the trusts", but the grandmother of the farm and labor aristocracies as well. My claim is that the U.S. should have attacked the parent (or grandparent) and the offspring simultaneously, and combined this attack with restructuring of both its monetary and its fiscal policy systems. Front Matter....Pages I-IX What Should We Have Done?....Pages 1-12 Towards an Evaluation of the Costs and Benefits of a (Dis-) Inflationary Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany....Pages 13-44 Price and Quantity Variability under Stagflation....Pages 45-69 The Contribution of Business Cycle Theories to the Explanation of the Actual Economic Slowdown....Pages 70-85 International Portfolio-Shifts and the Choice of a Monetary Rule....Pages 86-125 Long Waves in Relative Prices: An Interpretation....Pages 126-144 Real Wages, Business Cycles and Unemployment....Pages 145-158 Stagflation and the Recent Revival of Schumpeterian Entrepreneurship....Pages 159-185 The Influence of Wage Rate Variations on the Level of Employment with and without an Exogenous Interest Rate....Pages 186-200 Asymmetric Adjustment Costs and Price Stickiness....Pages 201-216 Edited By Helmut Frisch And Bernhard Gahlen. Includes Bibliographies.