Abstract
Most western industrialised countries experienced high inflation rates and substantial unemployment in the 1970s. This has led to questions being asked about the appropriateness of using conventional stabilisation policies. The aim of this paper is to consider, in the context of the Fed. Rep of Germany, and the Netherlands, whether it would have been possible to design stabilisation policies which would have attenuated, if only to a limited extent, the rapid rise in the rate of inflation and the level of unemployment during the period under investigation (1973–77), but especially so in the shorter period 1974–76. However, it must be emphasised that, although both countries’ inflation and unemployment rates during this period were lower — perhaps more so in the case of the F.R.G. — than those experienced by some of the other industrial countries, they were, nevertheless, higher than those experienced in the 1960s.
The work described here was carried out as part of the joint Programme of Research into Optimal Policy Evaluation at Imperial College of Science and Technology and the London Graduate School of Business Studies. The financial support of the Social Science Council is gratefully acknowledged.
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© 1983 Wiener Institut für Internationale Wirtschaftsvergleiche (WIIW) (The Vienna Institute for Comparative Economic Studies)
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Arestis, P., Holly, S., Karakitsos, E. (1983). Optimal Stabilisation Policies in West Germany and the Netherlands. In: Frowen, S.F. (eds) Controlling Industrial Economies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06340-6_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06340-6_15
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