Studies in Macroeconomic Theory

Studies in Macroeconomic Theory, Volume 1: Employment and Inflation is a collection of scholarly papers that accounts the development of a microeconomic theory of wage and price decisions and commitments. The book presents some features of the modern inflationary process and makes sense of some still accepted elements in the postclassical macroeconomics of Keynes and Phillips. The papers in this volume are grouped into seven sections. Part I describes disequilibrium models of employment. Part II gives closer scrutiny to the idea of the "natural" rate of unemployment. Part III studies the welfare economics of inflation in an equilibrium context. The fourth part deals with inflation planning. The papers in Part V discuss hypotheses about the causes of the rise in the rate of inflation in two historical episodes: the American inflation between 1955 - 1957 and 1972 - 1974. Part VI addresses some questions in the theory of economic stabilization by monetary and fiscal policy. The final section of this volume attempts to apply to matters of stochastic social choice, stabilization policy being one instance of such a choice, the conception of justice advanced by Rawls. The compendium will be of value to economists and economic policy makers.