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Pricing Systems, Indexes, and Price Behavior
Nancy and Richard Ruggles’s seminal work on prices has a contemporary relevance for modern-day theorists and practitioners. These carefully selected essays provide a core analysis of pricing systems and the behavior and measurement of prices.
More Information
Critical Acclaim
Contents
More Information
Nancy and Richard Ruggles’s seminal work on prices has a contemporary relevance for modern-day theorists and practitioners. These carefully selected essays provide a core analysis of pricing systems and the behavior and measurement of prices.
Initially, the authors examine pricing systems and the role of prices in the theories of value and income distribution. They examine the theory of marginal cost pricing and the welfare basis of the marginal cost pricing principle before focusing on the problems of measuring price changes over time and space. They also examine the reliability of domestic price statistics and price indices and offer an evaluation of the wholesale price index. They expand this analysis to examine the behavior of prices, costs, wage rates and earnings in the United States economy, placing particular emphasis on inflation between 1950 and 1973 and on price stability and economic growth.
This book will be invaluable to academics, statisticians and policymakers with an interest in micreoconomics and pricing.
Initially, the authors examine pricing systems and the role of prices in the theories of value and income distribution. They examine the theory of marginal cost pricing and the welfare basis of the marginal cost pricing principle before focusing on the problems of measuring price changes over time and space. They also examine the reliability of domestic price statistics and price indices and offer an evaluation of the wholesale price index. They expand this analysis to examine the behavior of prices, costs, wage rates and earnings in the United States economy, placing particular emphasis on inflation between 1950 and 1973 and on price stability and economic growth.
This book will be invaluable to academics, statisticians and policymakers with an interest in micreoconomics and pricing.
Critical Acclaim
‘Richard Ruggles, often assisted by Nancy Ruggles, has been a major contributor to national income accounting and to the empirical study of microeconomics and macroeconomics using that and other data. He has focused on the quantitative analysis of actual economic systems in a discipline increasingly preoccupied with abstract pure conceptual models. Like the work of Simon Kuznets and others, Ruggles’s analyses encompass an unusually wide range of variables.’
– Warren J. Samuels, Michigan State University, US
‘[Nancy and Richard Ruggles] were able to state and explain theoretical propositions and debates clearly and accurately, and they skilfully and tellingly brought empirical data to bear. These essays were written between 1940 and 1990 but almost all of them are very relevant to issues of great importance in 2000.’
– From the foreword by James Tobin
‘They are clearly a classic team that has contributed enormously to national income account analysis over the years. The recent concern about measuring prices and productivity and about the correct indexing for Social Security has brought renewed attention to their work. Every serious economics library should have the volumes.’
– Martin Feldstein, National Bureau of Economic Research, US
– Warren J. Samuels, Michigan State University, US
‘[Nancy and Richard Ruggles] were able to state and explain theoretical propositions and debates clearly and accurately, and they skilfully and tellingly brought empirical data to bear. These essays were written between 1940 and 1990 but almost all of them are very relevant to issues of great importance in 2000.’
– From the foreword by James Tobin
‘They are clearly a classic team that has contributed enormously to national income account analysis over the years. The recent concern about measuring prices and productivity and about the correct indexing for Social Security has brought renewed attention to their work. Every serious economics library should have the volumes.’
– Martin Feldstein, National Bureau of Economic Research, US
Contents
Contents: Preface Part I: Price Theory 1. The Welfare Basis of the Marginal Cost Pricing Principle 2. Recent Developments in the Theory of Marginal Cost Pricing 3. Discriminatory and Competitive Pricing 4. The Value of Value Theory Part II: Price Measurement 5. The Wholesale Price Index 6. Measuring the Cost of Quality 7. Domestic Price Statistics 8. Redundancy in Price Indexes for International Comparisons 9. Price Indexes and International Price Comparisons 10. The Wholesale Price Index Part III: Price Behavior 11. The Relative Movements of Real and Money Wage Rates 12. The Nature of Price Flexibility and the Determinants of Relative Price Changes in the Economy 13. Price Stability and Economic Growth in the United States 14. Chronic Inflation in the United States, 1950–73 15. The Anatomy of Earnings Behavior 16. The Measurement of the Supply and the Use of Labor Bibliography Index
