Incomes Policies: Past and Future Roles

Abstract

Margaret MacDougall’s approach to economics is above all practical and policy-relevant. It is properly acknowledged elsewhere in this volume through the areas in which it has been particularly exemplified, her work on the retail trades and her membership of numerous government and industry committees. This was the central feature of her public life as an applied economist. A further important facet has been her continuing interest in the wider problems of the contemporary British economy, notably problems of macroeconomic management. During much of her time as University Lecturer and College Tutor at Oxford this found expression in the lecture series in applied economics. This was taken as part of a compulsory course by Oxford undergraduates and quaintly named ‘Economic Organisation’. Carefully revised and updated year by year, these lectures constituted a review of current issues in macroeconomic policy as she saw them at the time, a review which, as is characteristic of the genre, no longer survives in permanent form.