An incomes policy is a government policy aimed at controlling inflation and maintaining full employment by holding down increases in wages and prices by statutory or other means. In the 1960s and 1970s, when Keynesianism, demand- pull, and cost-push theories of inflation were popular, incomes policies were widely pursued in the developed world. This reflected the strong belief that inflation and unemployment were closely connected, although incomes policies were unpopular with workers, whose wages were held down, often to an extent that caused a fall in the purchasing power of their incomes, as a result of inflation. However, the emergence of stagflation cast doubts on the benefits of these policies; with the rise of monetarism and the increasing popularity of laissez-faire government in the 1980s, incomes policies became much less attractive. Research Incomes Policy
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Abbreviations
Research Incomes Policy
