Wage-price issue

One of the most frequent criticisms of the economist is that he often spends his time investigating problems which, while interesting to fellow members of his rather exclusive profession, are not particularly important to society as a whole. Whatever may be the validity of this criticism in general, it certainly does not apply to the subject matter under discussion here. A strong case can be made for the proposition that the entire problem of the inflationary impact of our wage- and price-setting in stitutions constitutes one of the most important economic issues of our time. My own interest in this subject stems from an awareness of how very important it is that the public policies designed to deal with the various aspects of the wage-price issue be based on careful investigation and analysis.

However, while the central problem of this study has, so to speak, been "taken from society," the same cannot be said of its methodology. In looking over the vast array of popular and scholarly writings germane to the wage price issue, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that in our pursuit of this clusive topic we have been guilty of that typical American malady of impatience. We have tried to "catch the culprit" before we understood the nature and magnitude of the problem, and we have tried to under stand the problem before understanding its constituent elements. It is my conviction that this impetuous mode of attack has outlived its usefulness and that at this juncture what we need is a more detached and systematic analysis that will help us arrange the various parts of the wage price puzzle into a more coherent whole.