Experience during the last ten years has encouraged economists to review their judgements regarding behavior and policy. The experience of the 1970s brought inflation to prominence in the minds of policymakers and academic economists, raising questions about labor markets and other supply considerations, but also resulting in an atmosphere conducive to increasing attention on monetary and financial variables.
An account of some of the issues that, in this environment, occupied the thoughts of economists and conditioned the responses of policymakers in various Western countries is what this volume is about.