The Oxford Handbook of Post-Keynesian Economics, Volume 2: ... ...
G. C. Harcourt, Peter Kriesler - 2013 - で言及された。
コストプッシュではなく売り手インフレという用語
Lerner,A.P.1959."Statement of Abba Lerner."In Hearings before
the Joint Economic Committee,Part 7:The Effects of Monopolistic and
Quasi-Monopolistic Practices,2262-66.Washington,DC:U.S.
Government Printing Office.
Lester,R.A.1941.Economics of Labor.New York:Macmillan.
#7
2262~6
EMPLOYMENT, GROWTH, AND PRICE LEVELS
STATEMENT OF ABBA LERNER, LABOR AND INDUSTRIAL
RESEARCH CENTER, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Mr. LERNER. Again, I want to express my pleasure at being here. I will read my statement.
The understanding of the nature of inflation and of its appropriate treatment, cure, and prevention has been badly served by the concentration of economic theory on the analysis of perfect competition.
Economists have had good reason for this concentration, primarily because the study of perfect competition has brought out the ways in which the competitive capitalist or profit-and-loss system can bring about the most efficient production and distribution of what the consumer wants.
But perfect competition has been useful more as a norm by which the efficiency of the economy can be gaged than as an accurate description of its actual operation.
In a perfectly competitive economy, nobody would have any power over any price-or any wage, which is the price of labor.
All prices would be determined only by supply and demand on the market. Whenever there was an excess of supply over demand the price would fall; whenever there was an excess of demand over supply, the price would rise, and conversely a price could rise only when there was an excess demand and could fall only if there was an excess supply.
Inflation, or rising prices in general, could occur only if there was a general excess of demand or of spending, and the natural cure would be simply to cut out the excess demands by restrictive monetary or fiscal measures.
Price stability would be restored as soon as demand was no longer excessive. People would then no longer be trying to buy more than the economy is able to provide.
But as long as prices were not falling, we would know that there is still sufficient overall demand for what the economy is able to produce.
In a perfectly competitive economy every supplier of anything would be able to sell as much as he wanted to at the market price without any effort, and he would not be able to sell any at all at any higher price. There would be no need for or any possibility of applying the art of selling.
With all prices determined by the equation of supply and demand on the market, buyers and sellers would be able to decide only on how much to buy or to sell at this market price. Nobody would ever be free to decide on one price rather than another. There could therefore be no administered prices.
That we are not living in a perfectly competitive economy is thus evident at every turn, and in most other branches of economics this is well taken care of. Economists deal with imperfect competition,
monopoly, oligopoly, price leadership, marketing, collective bargaining, and a host of problems that have no place in the perfectly competitive economy.
But in dealing with the problem of the stability of the general price level, economists have tended to assume that we are indeed in a perfectly competitive economy in which all prices are market determined so that a rising or falling price level is a clear indication of excessive or deficient demand. It followed that adjusting the level of demand in the degree necessary to stop such movements would bring about just the right level of demand and cure or prevent both depression and inflation.
Pre-Keynesian economists went one step further and argued that no policy at all was necessary as long as the quantity of money was held relatively stable. Any tendency for prices in general to rise or to fall would cure itself. Rising prices would reduce the real value of the money stock as each dollar lost value. This would induce a de-
crease in demand as people cut their spending in attempts to restore the real value of the money stock. Since rising prices-in a perfectly competitive economy--could only be caused by excess demand, this would remove the cause and cure the inflation.
Conversely depression would cure itself because the falling prices, which-in a perfectly competitive economy–necessarily result from depression, would increase the real value of the money stock. This would induce more spending and remove the insufficiency of demand which constitutes the depression.
Since Keynes, most economists have considered this automatic cure for depression to be impractical because prices and wages refuse to fall in response to small and temporary deficiencies of demand.
Instead of suffering from long and severe depressions and undermining our long-term rate of growth, while waiting for wages and
prices to fall so as to raise the value of the money stock and thereby increase demand, it is possible and more practical to increase demand painlessly by expansionary monetary or fiscal measures.
But this still leaves intact the identification of deflation with deficient demand or depression and of inflation with excess demand, just as they must be in the perfectly competitive economy.
The Keynesian revolution merely says that the deffation of prices by depression is too little and too late. But the tardiness of wages and prices to fall in response to depression is only a result of their being determined by administrative decisions by businesses, by unions, or by combinations of these, instead of by the equation of supply and demand in perfect markets.
The administrative decisions may not only display a reluctance to reduce prices and wages when there is excess supply, they may also display a propensity to raise wages and prices. The Keynesian analysis considered only the first possibility. What I want to stress now is that the administration which is responsible for that is also responsible for making wages and prices rise even though there is deficient demand.
And just as it may take a long and sever depression to overcome the reluctance to reduce wages and prices, so it may take considerable depression even to overcome the propensity to raise them. This is, in fact, the case, and this constitutes the essence of our problem. The level of demand that divides prosperity from depression is not the same as that which divides inflation from deflation. We need something like 2 percent unemployment to allow for necessary movements from job to job in a changing economy but it seems to take about 7 percent unemployment, which means serious depression, to stop wages from rising faster than is compatible with price level stability.
When unemployment is between these two figures, we suffer from depression and from inflation at the same time. Attempts to cure the inflation by restricting demand have the effect of aggravating the depression. Attempts to cure the deepression by increasing demand have the effect of aggravating the inflation.
In this dilemma we seem strangely to be more concerned about the inflation than about the depression, and have been treating the inflation by restricting demand just as if it were a symptom of excess demand, as it would be in a perfectly competitive economy.
But when inflation is found in conjunction with depression-i.e., with more than 2 percent unemployment-it is not due to excess demand, to buyers trying to buy more goods than the economy is able to provide. It is due to sellers of products, or of labor, or both, administratively raising prices and/or wages even while demand is deficient, the induced depression not being sufficiently severe to stop them. It is not a buyers' inflation, but a sellers' inflation, and our frustrations come from treating the latter with the proper specific for the former; namely, restriction of demand.
There are a number of continuing changes in our economy that for some time have been strengthening the tendeney of prices to rise even in the face of depression and which seem likely to continue to strengthen this tendency; confidence that the Government will inerease domand whenever necessary to prevent severe depressions, continning
experience of rising prices and expectation of more of the same, continuing experience of inereasing real income and expectation of still more from nmuch advertised automation, atomic energy, et cetera, increasing political experience by trade unions and business lobbies, increasingly effective informal and often tacit agreement by businessmen to act in unison, the growing consensus that increased efficiency in a particular firm or industry calls for proportionage wage increases, and even the raising of markups by businessmen who are made to feel,
by the induced depression itself, that they cannot count on so much prosperity and must charge more so as to break even at a lower output.
When the nature of sellers' inflation is recognized, treatment may take one of three forms:
The first is to address appeals to business and to labor to exercise restraint in order to save the economy from the evils of inflation- or from the evils of the depression that will result if the authorities resorted to monetary or fiscal restriction.
Such appeals are not likely to be very successful as each price administrator will tend to feel that someone else ouglht to respond first.
A suggested refinement of this hortatory treatment is to have studies made and publicized of the expected inflationary effects of projected or threatened wage or price inereases. This would be a useful thing to do, but still wonld leave each price administrator with the excuse, in many cases quite sound, that the efficiency of the economy calls for other prices to be reduced rather than for his price to be held down.
The second form of treatment consists of measures like a more active antimonopoly program, removing restrictions on foreign competition, outlawing the extortions called fair trading, revamping those public utility commissions that have been using regulation to establish monopolies to regulate, extending antimonopoly measures to include labor, and other devices for increasing the competitiveness of the economy as a whole.
Such measures are well worthwhile in their own right, but are likely to be of only temporary effectiveness against sellers inflation.
The price reductions that this will bring about will serve to offset other price and wage increases, but when these price decreases have been fully carried out, the other wage and price increases will continue, for it is certain that even all the reforms together will not establish the perfectly competitive econony, and the reluetions may well be swamped by further improvements in the arts of large-scale organization and tacit agreement that are responsible for the administered prices and wages that cansed seliers' inflation in the first. place.
The third form is unlikely to be adopted until the first two have been tried and found inadequate. This consists of the revolutionary idea of combating sellers' inflation by curbing the inflationary activity of sellers. It calls for regulating the most important adnministered prices-but only prices, not outputs or services as in the case of public
utilities-so that they are made to behave the way competitive prices do. The less important administered prices will then follow suit as they do now.
The regulation would prevent an administered price from being raised if output was less than, say 80 percent of capacity, and would call for a reduction of price if output was less than, say, 70 percent сарасity.
Prices would then rise only when capacity was well utilized and would fall when there was much excess capacity, just as they do in a competitive market. Capacity would then be used rather than wasted.
Important administrative wages would be subject to slightly different regulations. Unlike the general price level, which we want to keep stable, average wages must rise with inereasing average productivity and with any reductions in the rate of markup which might result from the successful maintenance of price level stability with full employment. But particular wages, like particular prices, must be able to move in response to changes in particular markets.
The regulation would take the form of starting with a normal rate of wage increase, say 1 percent every 4 months, and provide for a larger wage increase, say, 2 percent, where labor was more than twice as scarce, as measured in some established way by unemployment and vacancy figures. Correspondingly there would be no increase where, by the same index, labor was only half as scarce as on the average.
With the most important administered prices and wages thus made to behave like competitive prices, and the less important administered prices and wages generally following suit, inflation would become coincident with excess demand and deflation with depression and deficient demand.
Monetary and fiscal policy would then really be able to prevent both inflation and depression by increasing or decreasing demand, according as the price level is rising or falling.
It is not to be expected that the regulation will quickly become popular enough for application, but it would be most advisable for the details of its operation to be studied and for its compatibility with all essential freedoms to be investigated, so that it could be put into effect when the other approaches have failed, or have been exhausted.
It is also possible that the knowledge that this approach was being seriously considered and worked at would make the other approaches somewhat more effective.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.
Mr. Ruggles, I know that is a joint statement by you and your wife.
しかし、インフレが恐慌と併発している場合、つまり失業率が2％を超えている場合、それは需要過剰によるものではなく、買い手が経済が供給できる以上の商品を買おうとしていることによるものである。それは、需要が不足していても、製品の売り手、あるいは労働者、あるいはその両方が、管理的に価格や賃金を引き上げたためであり、誘発された恐慌はそれを止めるには十分に深刻ではなかった。買い手のインフレではなく、売り手のインフレであり、私たちの不満は、後者を需要の制限という前者にふさわしい具体的なものとして扱うことにある。
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