IntroductiontoInflationCausesandEffects.pdfVIP

This PDF is a selection from an out-of-print volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research Volume Title: Inflation: Causes and Effects Volume Author/Editor: Robert E. Hall Volume Publisher: University of Chicago Press Volume ISBN: 0-226-31323-9 Volume URL: /books/hall82-1 Publication Date: 1982 Chapter Title: Introduction to Inflation: Causes and Effects Chapter Author: Robert E. Hall Chapter URL: /chapters/c11450 Chapter pages in book: (p. 1 - 10) Introduction Robert E. Hall The essays in this volume are the product of the NBERS Project on Inflation and reflect a dozen diverse views on one of the nations central economic problems. Our emphasis here is on diagnosis of the causes of inflation and a description of the effects of inflation, not on specific policy recommendations to end inflation. Many of us have views on what to do about inflation and have not hesitated to speak up in public about those views, but our papers here are not advocating those views. Instead, we are trying to illuminate some of the economic and political processes involving inflation. The twelve papers in this volume fall into four general categories. Two papers—those of Robert J. Gordon and Thomas J. Sargent—find dra- matically different answers to the central question of what would happen to output and employment if inflation were brought to an end. Two other papers deal with the types of change in economic institutions that might contribute to limiting inflation. Robert J. Barro points to the need for a monetary standard that stabilizes some dollar-denominated quantity in the economy as the key feature of an economy with stable prices. Robert E. Hall pursues this idea, presenting an example of a monetary standard which borrows from the gold standard yet tries to avoid some of its pitfalls. Seven of the remaining papers deal with one or another way that inflation has changed the economy or how the economy has reacted to inflation. J