Price controls against “greedflation”: lessons from the debate over incomes policy

Basile Clerc ()
Additional contact information
Basile Clerc: EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Why do some economists support price controls in the face of inflation during peacetime? Our thesis is that, in the history of economic thought, understanding the role of profits in inflationary dynamics is the crucial variable. To demonstrate this, we investigate the extensive literature on incomes policy, insofar as much of the thinking on macroeconomic price controls in peacetime is part of this literature. This corpus is crossed by a major schism: some advocate price and wage controls while others limit control to wages alone. We show that the defense of price controls is always based on the thesis that profits play an autonomous role in inflationary dynamics. Conversely, the advocates of an incomes policy reduced to wage controls see margins as mere transmission belts for excessive wage increases into prices. Price controls are thus rejected ex ante, even before any criticism of the consequences of their application.

Keywords: Price; controls; -; Wage; controls; -; Incomes; policy; -; Inflation; -; Unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04551115
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-04551115/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04551115

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().