Since 1945 preventing runaway wage inflation has been regarded as a key policy in managing an economy in a successful way. The exact nature of pay control has varied from country to country and from time to time. This book, originally published in 1987, examines pay control policies in major Western economies. It surveys developments from 1945 and explores the aims of pay policies and discusses the problems of implementation, comparing the different kinds of policies. By comparing the performance of these different approaches the book assesses the merits and pitfalls of the different approaches.

First published in 1983, this is the second of two volumes on the causes and cure of stagflation – that combination of mass unemployment and rapid inflation that is currently afflicting the mixed economies of the industrially developed world. The authors deplore the unemployment due to the failure of governments to adopt Keynesian measures for the expansion of economic activity, but recognise that in present conditions such measures would lead to an unacceptable and explosive inflation of money wages and prices. They therefore advocate a dual strategy of financial policies for a steady expansion of total money incomes combined with individual wage rates set at levels to promote employment. The book is of importance for all those concerned with macroeconomic theory and policy. The description of the meaning of a New Keynesian policy and of the arguments for it have been written in a way which should be intelligible to policy-makers and students, and not only to economists with technical training. Professional macroeconomists will be interested not only in these sections but also in the fully specified macroeconomic model used to analyse New Keynesian policies in economic terms and to carry out a counterfactual re-running of history. In addition, the unusually detailed exposition of the application of control techniques to a difficult multivariable control problem also makes the book of interest to control engineers who wish to acquaint themselves with recent generalisations of classical frequency response methods.

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.

Tripartism—the national-level interaction among representatives of labor, management, and government—occurs infrequently in the United States. Based on the U.S. experience, then, such interactions might seem irrelevant to economic performance and policymaking. The essays in this volume reveal the falsity of that assumption. Contributors from eight industrialized countries (Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and the United States) examine the changing nature of labor-management relations, with a particular focus on the role of tripartism and the decentralization of collective bargaining. Although nonexistent in the United States and on the decline in Japan and Australia, tripartism flourishes in Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands, expanding beyond traditional corporatist partners to include women's organizations, senior citizens, and other representatives of "civic society." The vibrancy of the coordinating mechanisms that help shape employment conditions and labor policy contradicts the traditional belief that an overpowering unilateral decentralizing shift is underway in labor-management interactions. The contributors show that these mechanisms are in fact increasing in the face of intensified pressures, promoting greater flexibility in work organization and working time.

Originally published between 1951 and 1987, the 8 volumes in this set: Provide a wide-ranging and critical review of both first and second generation theories of inflation (and the related problem of unemployment), including the classical approach to macroeconomics. Examine how inflation as a policy has come about in modern democracies, how it works, how to avoid it and at what cost Reassess the strengths and weaknesses of incomes policies Examine pay control policies in major Western economies and survey developments from 1945, explore the aims of pay policies and discusse the problems of implementation, comparing the different kinds of policies.

This paper is part II of a two-volume study conducted as a part of the IMF's ongoing process of evaluating its lending facilities. It focuses on IMF-supported programs and macroeconomic performance during 1988-92, reflecting information available through the end of 1993. Part I (Occasional Paper No. 128) provides an overview of the principal issues and findings and distills the main message for future programs. Part II presents detailed examinations of selected policy issues in five background papers.